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Screening older patients in the ED
Having screening tools that are accurate in terms of specificity and sensitivity is essential to improving care for this vulnerable group. This issue includes two papers from different parts of the world that will be of interest to ED clinicians' intent on improving screening and outcomes for older patients attending their departments.
The ISAR tool: how useful is it?
The Identifying Seniors at Risk (ISAR) tool has mixed predictive ability. Suffoletto and colleagues in Pittsburg undertook a prospective study of 202 adults over the age of 65 presenting to the ED to evaluate the ability of the ISAR tool to differentiate between older patients having a poor outcome within 30 days of ED care and those that did not. They also sought to establish whether self-reported ISAR risk factors correlated with objective measures and whether objective measures altered predictive ability. Their findings suggest that the ISAR tool does not differentiate well between older adults with or without 30 day hospital revisit or death. Furthermore, they found that related objective risk factors did not improve the performance so, …