[Centers for geriatric trauma DGU® : Distribution and development in Germany].

BACKGROUND

Due to the demographic changes, including the need for more orthogeriatric co-management, addressing the healthcare of geriatric patients is an important issue.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to create an overview of the fundamental characteristics of centers for geriatric trauma ATZ-DGU including the distribution of departments and cooperations as well as the level of trauma care. The distribution of sites across Germany was compared to hospital and population data.

METHODS

Certified German ATZ-DGU were assigned to Trauma Center DGU (TC) certification data (levels III-I) via institutional numbers. They were evaluated descriptively and correlations with several parameters at the federal states level were added.

RESULTS

Due to cooperations 188 institutions formed 147 ATZ-DGU and 152 provided orthogeriatric co-management in domo. Of the facilities with trauma surgery departments 86% (n = 168) were certified as TCs (level II = 33% > III = 30% > I = 22%). The number of ATZ-DGU per German state was correlated with the number of hospitals (r = 0.88), inhabitants (r = 0.92) and cases in total (r = 0.92, p < 0.001 each) but not with the proportion of people older than 65 years (p > 0.05). With only 14 facilities, the new federal states of Germany seemed to be disadvantaged and also showed great disparities compared to each other.

CONCLUSION

The levels of trauma care revealed a distribution referring to the different focus of the two certificates: treatment of the severely injured vs. geriatric co-treatment. On average, the population in the new German states was older, while there were less ATZ-DGU; however, there seemed to be a slight tendency towards improvement.