RESEARCH ARTICLE
Hospital Mortality Among Elderly Patients Admitted With Neurological Disorders Was Not Predicted by any Particular Diagnosis in a Tertiary Medical Center
Aroldo Bacellar*, Telma Assis, Bruno B. Pedreira, Gersonita Costa, Osvaldo J.M. Nascimento
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2018Volume: 12
First Page: 1
Last Page: 11
Publisher ID: TONEUJ-12-1
DOI: 10.2174/1874205X01812010001
Article History:
Received Date: 16/09/2017Revision Received Date: 19/12/2017
Acceptance Date: 30/12/2017
Electronic publication date: 22/01/2018
Collection year: 2018
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Neurological disorders (NDs) are associated with high hospital mortality. We aimed to identify predictors of hospital mortality among elderly inpatients with NDs.
Methods:
Patients aged ≥60 years admitted to the hospital between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2010 with acute NDs, chronic NDs as underpinnings of acute clinical disorders, and neurological complications of other diseases were studied. We analyzed demographic data, NDs, and comorbidities as independent predictors of hospital mortality. Logistic regression was performed for multivariable analysis.
Results:
Overall, 1540 NDs and 2679 comorbidities were identified among 798 inpatients aged ≥ 60 years (mean 75.8±9.1). Of these, 54.5% were female. Diagnostic frequency of NDs ranged between 0.3% and 50.8%. Diagnostic frequency of comorbidities ranged from 5.6% to 84.5%. Comorbidities varied from 0 to 9 per patient (90% of patients had ≥2 comorbidities), mean 3.2±1.47(CI, 3.1-3.3). Patients with multimorbidities presented with a mean of 4.7±1.7 morbidities per patient. Each ND and comorbidity were associated with high hospital mortality, producing narrow ranges between the lowest and highest incidences of death (hospital mortality = 18%) (95% CI, 15%-21%). After multivariable analysis, advanced age (P<0.001) and low socioeconomic status (P=0.003) were recognized as predictors of mortality, totaling 9% of the variables associated with hospital mortality.
Conclusion:
Neither a particular ND nor an individual comorbidity predicted hospital mortality. Age and low socioeconomic class accounted for 9% of predictors. We suggest evaluating whether functional, cognitive, or comorbidity scores will improve the risk model of hospital mortality in elderly patients admitted with ND.
