ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to analyze characteristics of 2,445elderly patients visiting the emergency room of a universityhospital located in a metropolitan area from July 2004 to July 2005.The major findings were that the sex ratio of the patients wasalmost 50:50, about 58% of the patients were the young-old groupbetween 65 and 74 years, about half of them visited during theday time between 8:00 am and 4:00 pm, while the most commoncategory of complaints was internal medicine (73.5%) and the mostcommon problem of diseases or related problems was cardiovascularproblems (30.1%). It was discussed that there should be agreat need for emergency care protocol for the elderly patients togive them a systematically appropriate emergency care.