Acute coronary syndrome, comorbidity, and mortality in geriatric patients.

Morbidity and mortality rates from heart diseases are highly represented in geriatric-aged patients, but these patients also have supporting diseases. Acute coronary syndrome includes unstable angina and acute myocardial infarction with and without ST elevation. The aim of this study was to make a retrospective morbidity analysis of patients admitted to the emergency department. The study is made for a period of three years (from 1998 to 2000). It includes 588 patients divided by age (395 were 65-75 years old; 193 were older than 75 years) and sex (there were 326 men and 262 women). Comorbidity and mortality were investigated. Patients with one, two, three, and more than three supporting diseases were 6.29%, 23.13%, 68.53%, and 2.04%, respectively, of the total number. The most frequent geriatric patients had heart failure, followed by endocrinological diseases (type 2 diabetes, obesity, struma), neurological diseases (insultus, paresis), and chronic kidney diseases (pielonephritis, nephrolithiasis). The combination of hypertension, heart failure, and type 2 diabetes had the highest comorbidity frequency. The mortality rate for 1998 was 8.81%, for 1999 7.74%, and for 2000 13.41%. The mortality rate at the first 12 hours at the beginning of the acute coronary syndrome was 66.6%. Geriatric patients suffer from many diseases, and at the beginning of the onset of acute coronary syndrome they have multiorganal failure. Elderly patients are a high-risk contingent in intensive coronary care units.