Geriatric trauma: injury patterns and outcome.

Over a 2-year period, 100 consecutive patients more than 70 years of age with multiple injuries were evaluated at a metropolitan trauma center for injury patterns and factors that affected survival. The analysis incorporated mechanism of injury, body region affected, Injury Severity Score, shock, change from level of prehospital function, and mortality. The mortality for the group was 15%. It was found that the Injury Severity Score was not predictive of survival in the elderly injured. However, central nervous system injury (p less than 0.01) and hypovolemic shock (p less than 0.001) were predictive of survival. While 85% of the injured patients survived, 88% of these did not return to their previous level of independence.