Many Older Adults with Dementia Experience Recurrent ED Visits, Study Finds

McKnight’s Home Care
 
A “significant portion” of community-dwelling older adults with dementia display a pattern of repeated emergency department (ED) visits, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Geriatrics Society (AGS).
 
The “population-based retrospective cohort study,” which analyzed ED visits among community-dwelling adults 66 years and older in Ontario, Canada, over a nearly 10-year period, also found that frequent users of anticonvulsants, antipsychotics and benzodiazepines had the highest risk of recurrent ED visits. 
 
Of the over 175,000 older adults studied, two groups — Group J (10,365 individuals) and Group L (7,353 individuals) — were deemed to be at a “higher-risk” of recurrent ED visits. Both groups included more individuals residing in rural and low-income areas and also having higher usage rates of anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, and benzodiazepines.
 
Dementia prevalence is expected to increase globally, from 57 million in 2020 to 153 million by 2050, but higher healthcare costs and barriers to diagnosis and care access are creating health disparities, the study said. 
 
The study also found that a history of an ED visit or visits during the prior year was the strongest predictor of recurrent visits and perhaps the most useful for identifying older adults in need of interventions.

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