Özet:

Introduction: Elderly patients have increased mortality compared with younger patients after experiencing trauma.Although different categories of geriatric age groups exist in medical literature, the World Health Organization categorizes geriatric people as older (from 65 to 79 years old) and oldest-old (³80 years old). The aim of this study was to compare injury severity, mortality with hospitalization, intensive care unit, andsurgery rates with hospitalization time of younger patients with those of elderly people and within 2 geriatric age groups admitted to the emergency department after traffic accidents. Materials and Method: Patients admitted to a teaching hospital emergency department after traffic accidents between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2013 were enrolled in this retrospective study. Age groups were defined as young, older and oldest-old. Injury severity was assessed with the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) for 6 body regions and the Injury Severity Score (ISS). p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: In total2687 patients were included in the study;196 (6.7%) patients were classified as older and 59 (2.0%) patients were classified as oldest-old. Mortality (6.3% vs. 0.7%, p<0.001) with hospitalization (23.1 vs. 12.3%%, p<0.001), ICU admission (7.1% vs. 2.3%%, p<0.001), and surgery rates (11.8% vs. 6.0%%, p<0.001) with hospitalization time (1.1 vs. 2.8 days) were higher in elderly patients than in young patients but were similar between the 2 geriatric age groups. Conclusion: Elderly patients experience more severe trauma after traffic accidents young patients; however, no difference was observed between the 2 geriatric age groups defined by World Health Organization.

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