Introduction: The changes in the epidemiology of hospital admissions during this 13 year period may be due to influences from the changes in the age and sex of patients admitted to the hospital. To describe the characteristics of patients admitted to the Division of General Internal Medicine (DGIM) at a tertiary hospital in relation to age and sex.
Material and methods: All hospital admission episodes of DGIM via the registry of the Basic Minimum Data Set at the Hospital General Universitario de Alicante (Spain) from January 2000 to December 2012 were analyzed. We examine the relationship between the main diagnosis, length of stay, and destination at discharge, we stratified the analyses by age (under 80, 80-90, over 90) and by sex (males and female).
Results: 18,570 (4.8%) out of 387, 862 hospital discharges >14 years old had been admitted to the DGIM. The number of admissions to the DGIM increased from 1,362 in 2000 to 1,671 in 2012 (R2=0.632). The median age of admissions was 76.9 in 2000 and 81.3 in 2012 (p<0.001). Female median age was 80.5 years old, which was older than males (76.9; p<0.001). After adjusting for sex, octogenarians and nonagenarians had a greater risk of being admitted for respiratory system diseases, genitourinary system diseases, circulatory system diseases and infectious and parasitic diseases. After adjusting for age, females had a greater risk of being admitted for disorders of the blood-forming organs, endocrine disorders, and circulatory system diseases. With respect to age, there was a higher increase in mortality in 80-89 year old patients (13.1%), and especially in illnesses of patients >90 years old (22.0%; p<0.001).
Conclusion: The profile for octogenarians and nonagenarians admitted to the DGIM and hospital mortality is different to that of younger people. The profile of hospitalization in females was different to that of males
age, octogenarian, nonagenarian, sex, internal medicine, hospitalizations
10.19193/0393-6384_2016_2_41