Deaths in hospital emergency departments in Aragon: patient characteristics and association with comorbidity

Objective.

To describe the clinical and personal characteristics of patients who died in hospital emergency departments in Aragon, Spain, and explore associations with the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI).

Methods.

Descriptive, observational, cross-sectional study of deaths between 2013 and 2017. Data was extracted from the clinical database for hospital emergencies (official name, Puesto Clínico Hospitalario). Associations between variables and the CCI were explored with the ????2 test (significance level P<.05).

Results.

The mean CCI was 6.58. A total of 1177 patients had CCIs of 7 or higher. The mean age was 81.1 years, and 52.1% were men. The mean (SD) time until death in the emergency department was 639 (777) minutes. The CCI was significantly associated with most clinical and personal variables studied, with the exception of sex and year.

Conclusions.

Patients who die in Aragon’s emergency departments have high levels of comorbidity. A large proportion of patients are of advanced age. Polypharmacy and advanced chronic conditions are common. We stress the need to implement emergency department approaches to ongoing and palliative care for this group, which is growing as the population ages.