Falls in the elderly.
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Accidental Falls↗
Biomedical subjects
J Death
Publications and source records attributed to J Death.
Geriatric medicine in practice. An overview.
Older patients with chronic health problems are a common presentation in general practice. The Central Coast Division of General Practice identified 'care of the elderly' as one of the priorities for local membership. This is the first in a series of articles based on the 'Geriatric Attachment Programme', which was jointly developed between the Division of General Practice and the Department of Geriatric Medicine, Central Coast Health. The recent introduction of the Health Assessment and Health Care Plans for the elderly into the Medical Benefit Schedule encourages preventive and anticipatory care. Doing this successfully requires a structured approach. This series will offer a practical guidance approach to enable readers to achieve this goal. In this article we provide an overview of the issues important to the care of the elderly. Subsequent articles deal with specific issues in detail.
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Comparison of clock drawing with Mini Mental State Examination as a screening test in elderly acute hospital admissions.
Clock drawing is a quick, easy to remember test that is well received by patients. It is a good screening test for Alzheimer's disease in the outpatient setting. We evaluated its usefulness compared with the standard Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) in elderly acute medical and surgical hospital admissions. Within 48 hours of admission, 117 patients over 70 years old were administered the MMSE and asked to draw a clock. Using the MMSE as the standard, clock drawing had a sensitivity of 77% and a specificity of 87%. Patients with discrepant scores were then further evaluated. The findings suggest that normal clock drawing ability reasonably excludes cognitive impairment or other causes of an abnormal MMSE in elderly acute medical and surgical hospital admissions, where cognitive impairment is common and frequently missed.
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Non-starch polysaccharide/dietary fibre supplementation using small meals in long-stay frail elderly patients.
Small meals of high non-starch polysaccharide (NSP)/dietary fibre cakes were offered to clinically stable continuing-care elderly patients, replacing the standard provision of low NSP/dietary fibre commercial cakes in an attempt to improve their well being. The study design was comprised of a 4 week control period, a 4 week intervention period, when modified cakes were offered, and finally a second 4 week control period. During intervention, an additional 33% NSP or 23% dietary fibre was offered, but only 7.7% and between 3.5% and 5.6% were consumed, respectively. Anthropometric measurements and bowel frequency did not change throughout the study but a decrease in aperient use was noted. From this study it was concluded that more comprehensive changes in food provision are required to achieve the current recommended consumption of NSP/dietary fibre in continuing-care elderly patients.
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