Aims: The advanced aged person over 90 years old is one of the fasting growing groups. This project would like to evaluate patients over 90 years old admitted to a regional Victoria hospital.
Methods: We conducted an 8 years retrospective longitudinal observational study of patients aged over 90 admitted to Albury Wodonga Health, Wodonga Hospital in 2015. We evaluated the admitting conditions, discharge medications, long term survival and analysed several potential prognostic factors.
Results: There were 135 patients in this study (women to men 1.7, age 90-105). The top 5 admitting conditions were chest infection, delirium, decompensated heart failure, urinary tract infection, acute renal impairment. There was a variable in number of discharge medications (0 - 16). The incidence of polypharmacy was 82.5%. There were 6 deaths during admission (4.4%). Approximately 90.6% of patients were able to return to their previous accommodations. There were 121 routinely discharged patients with mortality data. The mortality rates were 19.0% in 6 months, 31.4% in one year, 61.2% in 3 years, 81% in 5 years, 96.7% in 8 years. There was no survival difference for gender, ischaemic heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, anaemia, falls, fractures, Vit D deficiency, cognitive impairment and polypharmacy. Patients with Stage 4 renal impairment and discharge to residential care had significant lower survival rates.
Conclusions: Elderly patients aged over 90 in a regional hospital were a heterogenous cohort for presenting conditions, co-morbidities and medications. From this cohort severe renal impairment and discharge to residential care were poor prognostic factors.