Medical adverse events in elderly hospitalized patients: a prospective study.

Objectives: To determine the frequency of medical adverse events in elderly patients admitted to an acute care geriatric unit, the predictive factors of occurrence, and the correlation between adverse events and hospital mortality rates.

Methods: This prospective study included 171 admissions of patients aged 60 years and older in the acute care geriatric unit in a teaching hospital in Brazil between 2007 and 2008. The following variables were assessed at admission: the patient age, gender, number of prescription drugs, geriatric syndromes (e.

Meditation reduces sympathetic activation and improves the quality of life in elderly patients with optimally treated heart failure: a prospective randomized study.

Objective: We tested whether meditation can reduce sympathetic activation, evaluated by norepinephrine blood levels (NE), and improve quality of life in elderly persons with congestive heart failure (CHF).

Design And Setting: This was a prospective, randomized study conducted from April 2000 to October 2001 in an ambulatory care teaching hospital in São Paulo, Brazil.

Subjects: We studied 19 patients with CHF, 74.