:format():fill())
“All those patients that didn’t die of their heart attacks and strokes from 20 years ago, due to the increase in successful therapies that we now use, come back with dementia and multiple illnesses later.”
This provocative observation by leading Australian emergency specialist Dr David Green highlights the mounting pressure on our already strained hospitals to cope with the number of frail older people coming through their doors and filling up beds.
Hospital managers are concerned they are barely keeping pace with older patients needing extended treatment and stays because of falls and associated conditions.
In 2020-21, more than 140,000 65-plus Australians were hospitalised because of falls. Of those, 5,500 died.
The pressure is expected to grow as Australia's population ages, in what is referred to as the “silver tsunami”.
“We decided we had to do something about it because this is going to be the trend in the next few years to come – many years to come,” Sydney’s Alfred Hospital’s trauma department deputy director, Associate Professor Joseph Mathew, said.
Dr Mathew says it’s too common to hear of an older person who has had a fall and “has not been fully diagnosed and has then turned a critical downturn after that, and they just worsen and end up dying”.
He says The Alfred is only seeing the tip of the iceberg for geriatric trauma.
“There is a much larger cohort that is presenting to suburban hospitals and regional hospitals, and there's quite a lot of significant evidence to suggest that they are under-triaged, and the severity of the injuries are under-recognised.”
The Alfred recently developed a specialised Geriatric Trauma Service to cope with a 20% increase, in one year, in falls from standing height.