Elder Orphans Hiding in Plain Sight: A Growing Vulnerable Population.

Adults are increasingly aging alone with multiple chronic diseases and are geographically distant from family or friends. It is challenging for clinicians to identify these individuals, often struggling with managing the growing difficulties and the complexities involved in delivering care to this population. Clinicians often may not recognize or know how to address the needs that these patients have in managing their own health.

Liberal versus restrictive blood transfusion strategy: 3-year survival and cause of death results from the FOCUS randomised controlled trial.

Background: Blood transfusion might affect long-term mortality by changing immune function and thus potentially increasing the risk of subsequent infections and cancer recurrence. Compared with a restrictive transfusion strategy, a more liberal strategy could reduce cardiac complications by lowering myocardial damage, thereby reducing future deaths from cardiovascular disease. We aimed to establish the effect of a liberal transfusion strategy on long-term survival compared with a restrictive transfusion strategy.

Delirium outcomes in a randomized trial of blood transfusion thresholds in hospitalized older adults with hip fracture.

Objectives: To determine whether a higher blood transfusion threshold would prevent new or worsening delirium symptoms in the hospital after hip fracture surgery.

Design: Ancillary study to a randomized clinical trial.

Setting: Thirteen hospitals in the United States and Canada.

A before and after study of medical students' and house staff members' knowledge of ACOVE quality of pharmacologic care standards on an acute care for elders unit.

Background: The Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders (ACOVE) comprehensive set of quality assessment tools for ill older persons is a standard designed to measure overall care delivered to vulnerable elders (ie, those aged > or =65 years) at the level of a health care system or plan.

Objective: The goal of this research was to quantify the pretest and posttest results of medical students and house staff participating in a pharmacotherapist-led educational intervention that focused on the ACOVE quality of pharmacologic care standards.

Methods: This was a before and after study assessing the knowledge ofACOVE standards following exposure to an educational intervention led by a pharmacotherapist.

Themes from a grounded theory analysis of elder neglect assessment by experts.

Purpose: This paper describes one program that has developed a screening procedure for assessing elder mistreatment, with a special focus on elder neglect. The aim is to understand how expert neglect assessment teams process and diagnose complex geriatric cases referred for suspected elder neglect. What are the key themes that must be understood in order to determine if neglect should be suspected and confirmed?

Design And Methods: Transcripts of audio recordings of neglect assessment team meetings were analyzed by using grounded theory analysis.