Towards an Integrated Care System for the Assistance of Patients With Chronic Diseases, Multimorbidity, Frailty, and Polypharmacy
When admitted to the emergency department (ED), elderly non-autonomous patients show high risk of adverse health outcomes. The prompt identification of ED use risk factors in such population is hence needed. While cognitive impairment is a known clinical risk factor, biomarkers of most prevalent dementias have been scarcely investigated as possible ED use predictors. Within this context, this prospective study aims at exploring whether plasma phospho-tau181 and cerebrovascular burden can predict ED use at 6 months in elderly non-autonomous patients, irrespective of frailty.
• fluency in Italian language,
• age higher than 64 years,
• loss of autonomies of daily living as assessed by the Katz Activities of Daily Living or in the Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living questionnaires,
• having performed routinary blood exams in the 6 months prior to recruitment
• having performed head neuroimaging feasable for cerebrovascular burden assessment, i.e., Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT), in the 6 months prior to recruitment.