Functional trajectories during hospitalization: a prognostic sign for elderly patients.

Background: Clinicians have used measurements of pathological conditions and functional status to capture the heterogeneity of older individuals for prognostic purposes. However, the literature pays low attention to physical functional changes.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study to investigate the association between functional changes during hospitalization and 3-month mortality.

Relationship between functional loss before hospital admission and mortality in elderly persons with medical illness.

Objective: This hospital-based prospective study tests the hypothesis that, in a large group of hospitalized elderly patients, those who report functional decline between pre-illness baseline and hospital admission have a higher risk of death.

Methods: Nine hundred fifty elderly ambulant patients (F = 69.3%; mean age 78.

Geriatric Index of Comorbidity: validation and comparison with other measures of comorbidity.

Background: the debate about measures of chronic comorbidity in the elderly is mainly due to the lack of consensus on pathogenetic models.

Objective: the aim of the present study was to compare the concurrent validity of a number of measures of chronic comorbidity assuming different pathogenic models, versus disability in elderly patients.

Setting: the Geriatric Evaluation and Rehabilitation Unit for subacute and disabled patients.