Why the study?
Do elderly patients (>70 years) with myocardial infarction have worse outcomes in a coronary care unit compared to younger patients?
Do elderly patients (>70 years) with myocardial infarction have worse outcomes in a coronary care unit compared to younger patients?
Elderly patients admitted to the CCU for myocardial infarction experience double the mortality and longer hospital stays compared to younger patients, despite similar success in managing primary ventricular fibrillation.
Elderly MI patients face higher CCU mortality and complications; extends age-stratified risk data but leaves optimal strategies open.
The clinical features of myocardial infarction were compared in 104 patients over the age of 70 and 399 younger patients admitted to a coronary care unit. Absence of an age bar at 70 years has increased the number of admission to the unit by 24%, and the number of patients with proved infarcts by 26%. Severe complications are more common and mortality is doubled in the elderly. Although immediate management of primary ventricular fibrillation is as successful in older as in younger patients, treatment of the elderly with less dramatic conditions is less successful. The elderly survivors tend to spend longer in the coronary unit and subsequently in the general medical ward.
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Williams et al. (1976) studied this question.