C. Adrian Austin, MD, MSCR, instructor in the division of geriatric medicine and division of pulmonary and critical care medicine, led the compilation of a tool-kit for age-friendly pulmonary and critical care best practices. The project was sponsored by the American Thoracic Society.
Key points include:
- In older patients with a critical illness, pre-ICU functional disability and presence of frailty are associated with worse outcomes, including greater short and long-term mortality.
- Multiple studies have demonstrated that treatments provided to older patients with a critical illness are often incongruent with their care preferences – eliciting individual care preferences from older patients and their health care proxies in order to ensure that the treatments received are aligned is a vital component of delivering exceptional critical care.
- Pre-ICU cognitive impairment and ICU-associated delirium are associated with worse outcomes in older patients following critical illness.
- Newly acquired or progressive cognitive impairment is common in older adults who are survivors of critical illness.
Find the tool-kit here.