Frail Elderly Subjects: Inhospital Pathways and Adverse Outcome After Hospitalisation Via Emergency Department

The SAFES cohort was formed within a National Research Program (funded by the French Ministry of health) into the recruitment of emergency units in nine teaching hospitals. All nine centres had a geriatric ward. The inclusion of subjects ran from March 1st 2001 to January 17th 2002. To be eligible, patients were to be 75 or over, to have been hospitalised in a medical ward in the same hospital as the emergency unit to which they were initially admitted. Subjects were not eligible if hospitalisation was into intensive care or surgery, or if admission did not occur after admission to the emergency unit. Every day in each centre, patients admitted to the emergency unit were registered. From the list thus obtained, patients were selected by random draw stratified at two levels: in each week, 5 days were selected randomly, and for each of these days, two patients were chosen randomly. Next, each patient was visited by a specialist in geriatrics familiar with the survey procedures. In the course of this interview, patients were informed about the study, prior to signing the consent form. If the clinical status and/or the cognitive status of the patient did not enable informed consent, the interviewer referred to the subject's representative. Follow-up was by telephone interview after the 1st, 8th and 21st month and by face-to-face interviews after the 5th, 12th, 18th, and 24th month following the initial hospitalisation. Several outcome have been studied.