Background Korea is rapidly becoming a super aging society and is facing the increased burden of critical care for the elderly people. Traditionally, far-advanced age has been regarded as a triage criterion for intensive care unit (ICU) admission. We evaluated how the characteristics and prognostic factors of very elderly patients (≥85 years) admitted to the ICU changed over the last decade.
Methods We retrospectively evaluated the data of patients admitted to the ICU over 11 years (2007–2017). The clinical characteristics and outcomes of the very elderly-patients group were evaluated. Factors associated with mortality were assessed by a cox regression analysis.
Results Comparing the first half (2007–2012) and the second half (2013–2017) of the study period, the proportion of very elderly group increased from 603/47,657 (1.3%), to 697/37,756 (1.8%) (P<0.001). Among 1,294 very elderly patients, 1,274 patients were analyzed excluding hopeless discharge (n=20). The non-surgical reasons for ICU admission (67.0% vs. 76.1%, P<0.001) and the percentage of patients with co-morbidities (78.3% vs. 82.7%, P=0.048) were increased. Nevertheless, the hospital mortality decreased (21.3% vs. 14.9%, P=0.001). High creatinine levels, use of vasopressors and ventilator weaning failure were associated with in-hospital mortality.
Conclusions The proportion of very elderly people in the ICU increased over the last decade. The non-surgical causes of ICU admission increased compared with the surgical causes. Despite an increasement in ICU admissions of very elderly patients, in-hospital mortality of very elderly ICU patients decreased.
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Background Elderly patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have a high disease severity and mortality. However, the use of the frailty scale and severity score to predict in-hospital mortality in the elderly is not well established. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the use of these scores in COVID-19 cases in the elderly.
Methods This multicenter retrospective study included severe COVID-19 patients admitted to seven hospitals in Republic of Korea from February 2020 to February 2021. We evaluated patients’ Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II score; confusion, urea nitrogen, respiratory rate, blood pressure, 65 years of age and older (CURB-65) score; modified early warning score (MEWS); Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score; clinical frailty scale (CFS) score; and Charlson comorbidity index (CCI). We evaluated the predictive value using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.
Results The study included 318 elderly patients with severe COVID-19 of whom 237 (74.5%) were survivors and 81 (25.5%) were non-survivors. The non-survivor group was older and had more comorbidities than the survivor group. The CFS, CCI, APACHE II, SOFA, CURB-65, and MEWS scores were higher in the non-survivor group than in the survivor group. When analyzed using the ROC curve, SOFA score showed the best performance in predicting the prognosis of elderly patients (area under the curve=0.766, P<0.001). CFS and SOFA scores were associated with in-hospital mortality in the multivariate analysis.
Conclusions The SOFA score is an efficient tool for assessing in-hospital mortality in elderly patients with severe COVID-19.
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