PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

The aging population and emergency departments

Demographic change is predicted to increase emergency hospital admissions and length of emergency visits

2013-07-09
(Press-News.org) Boston – As the population gets older, and the baby boomers begin to enter their 60's and 70's, one might assume that the number of trips to the emergency department will also increase. This is contradicted by new research from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), which shows that population aging will not cause the number of emergency department (ED) visits to increase between now and 2050. However, visits will become longer and hospitalizations will become more frequent. This research will appear in the July issue of Health Affairs.

"With US emergency care characterized as 'at the breaking point', we wanted to study how the aging of the U.S. population would affect the demand for emergency department services and hospitalizations in the coming decades," explained Daniel J. Pallin, MD, MPH, director of research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at BWH and lead author of this study. "We found that demographic change will not cause the number of ED visits to increase, but visits will get longer and there will be more hospitalizations."

To study the effect of aging on demand for ED services, the researchers quantified the number of visits that would occur if the structure of the U.S. population changed, but everything else remained the same. They used 2009 as the baseline to model the expected ED use for each age and race subgroup. They then applied these visit rates to the population the US Census Bureau expects to exist in future years, through 2050. The main outcome measure was the ratio of the rate of increase in ED visits to the rate of increase in total population. Researchers were surprised – and reassured – to find that the number of ED visits would increase only at the same rate as the population increased. However, they also found that the aggregate amount of time patients spend in EDs nationwide will increase 10 percent faster than population growth, due to longer visits. More worrisome still, they predict that hospital admissions from the ED will increase 23 percent faster than population growth.

"Our analysis predicts that the total amount of time spent by patients in EDs across the country will increase 1.1 times faster than population growth as the population ages," explained Pallin. "This means that the United States will need 10 percent more ED resources per capita than available today." Pallin says the most important take home message for this research is that since the length-of-stay and number of hospitalizations are predicted to increase, the process of moving patients from the ED into the hospital needs to be as efficient as possible.

Researchers note that the principal limitation of this investigation is the scope of the research. The researchers only predicted changes in healthcare based on demographic change, and assumed that all other factors would remain stable (like whether a given person will choose to visit the ED instead of a doctor's office). Also, they did not analyze hospitalizations that come from anywhere else besides the ED; other hospitalizations account for roughly 55 percent of the total.

### This research was supported by a seed grant from the Brigham and Women's Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine.

Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a 793-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of Partners HealthCare. BWH has more than 3.5 million annual patient visits, is the largest birthing center in New England and employs more than 15,000 people. The Brigham's medical preeminence dates back to 1832, and today that rich history in clinical care is coupled with its national leadership in patient care, quality improvement and patient safety initiatives, and its dedication to research, innovation, community engagement and educating and training the next generation of health care professionals. Through investigation and discovery conducted at its Biomedical Research Institute (BRI), BWH is an international leader in basic, clinical and translational research on human diseases, involving nearly 1,000 physician-investigators and renowned biomedical scientists and faculty supported by nearly $625 million in funding. BWH continually pushes the boundaries of medicine, including building on its legacy in organ transplantation by performing the first face transplants in the U.S. in 2011. BWH is also home to major landmark epidemiologic population studies, including the Nurses' and Physicians' Health Studies, OurGenes and the Women's Health Initiative. For more information and resources, please visit BWH's online newsroom.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Innovative MIT study estimates extent to which air pollution in China shortens human lives

2013-07-09
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A high level of air pollution, in the form of particulates produced by burning coal, significantly shortens the lives of people exposed to it, according to a unique new study of China co-authored by an MIT economist. The research is based on long-term data compiled for the first time, and projects that the 500 million Chinese who live north of the Huai River are set to lose an aggregate 2.5 billion years of life expectancy due to the extensive use of coal to power boilers for heating throughout the region. Using a quasi-experimental method, the researchers ...

CPAP therapy reduces nightmares in veterans with PTSD and sleep apnea

2013-07-09
DARIEN, IL – A new study suggests that CPAP therapy reduces nightmares in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Results show that the mean number of nightmares per week fell significantly with CPAP use, and reduced nightmare frequency after starting CPAP was best predicted by CPAP compliance. "Patients with PTSD get more motivated to use CPAP once they get restful sleep without frequent nightmares, and their compliance improves" said principal investigator Sadeka Tamanna, MD, MPH, medical director of the Sleep Disorders ...

UCBS's NCEAS find tropical forest blossoms are sensitive to changing climate

2013-07-09
(Santa Barbara, California) –– The North Pole isn't the only place on Earth affected by slight increases in temperature. Until recently, scientific thinking used to posit that tropical forests, which already exist in warm climates, may not be impacted much by climate change. But a new study conducted by UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) shows that to be erroneous. In fact, the results indicate that tropical forests are producing more flowers in response to only slight increases in temperature. The findings were published online ...

Research points to biomarker that could track Huntington's disease progression

2013-07-09
MENLO PARK, Calif.—July 8, 2013—A hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's is that by the time symptoms appear, significant brain damage has already occurred—and currently there are no treatments that can reverse it. A team of SRI International researchers has demonstrated that measurements of electrical activity in the brains of mouse models of Huntington's disease could indicate the presence of disease before the onset of major symptoms. The findings, "Longitudinal Analysis of the Electroencephalogram and Sleep Phenotype ...

NASA's polar robotic ranger passes first Greenland test

2013-07-09
Defying 30 mph gusts and temperatures down to minus 22 F, NASA's new polar rover recently demonstrated in Greenland that it could operate completely autonomously in one of Earth's harshest environments. The robot known as GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, was designed by teams of students attending engineering boot camps at Goddard in the summers of 2010 and 2011. Built to carry a ground-penetrating radar to analyze layers of snow and ice, the rover was later transferred to Boise State University ...

Inhibiting macrophage MerTK signaling creates an innate immune response against cancer

2013-07-09
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - The tyrosine kinase MerTK plays a prominent role in the body's immune response. MerTK signaling helps "calm" the body's first line of immunity, the macrophage, while it performs the routine duties - clearing cells that die and healing damaged tissue. New evidence by a University of North Carolina-led team published online on July 8 by the Journal of Clinical Investigation shows that MerTK macrophage action in the microenvironment that surrounds cancer cells blunts the immune response, allowing the tumor cell to grow and metastasize. The study, led ...

Corals cozy up with bacterial buddies

2013-07-09
Corals may let certain bacteria get under its skin, according to a new study by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and soon to be published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The study offers the first direct evidence that Stylophora pistillata, a species of reef-building coral found throughout the Indian and west Pacific Oceans, harbors bacterial denizens deep within its tissues. "We have evidence that other species of coral also host these bacteria, and that they ...

Consuming soy peptide may reduce colon cancer metastasis

2013-07-09
URBANA, Ill. – After a recent University of Illinois study showed that injection of the soy peptide lunasin dramatically reduced colon cancer metastasis in mice, the researchers were eager to see how making lunasin part of the animals' daily diet would affect the spread of the disease. "In this new study, we find that giving lunasin orally at 20 mg/kg of body weight reduced the number of metastatic tumors by 94 percent—we went from 18 tumors to only one. And that was done using lunasin alone; no other type of therapy was used," said Elvira de Mejia, a U of I professor ...

Nurse practitioners provide more primary care in states with least restrictive regulations

2013-07-09
Facing a nationwide shortage of primary care physicians, some states in recent years have eased up on regulations that create barriers for nurse practitioners who want to work as primary care providers. That easing of rules has had the intended effect. According to a new study by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, those states with the fewest restrictions on nurse practitioners' scope of practice had two-and-a-half times more patients receiving primary care from nurse practitioners than did the most restrictive states. "We wanted to look ...

In baseball, bigger still better

2013-07-09
DURHAM, N.C. -- Max Scherzer leads Major League Baseball in wins. As a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, he hasn't lost a game this season. His 6-foot, 3-inch frame is a telling example of constructal-law theory, said Duke University engineer Adrian Bejan. The theory predicts that elite pitchers will continue to be taller and thus throw faster and seems also to apply to athletes who compete in golf, hockey and boxing. Studying athletes -- since most sports are meticulous in keeping statistics -- provides an insight into the biological evolution of human design in nature, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Pledge to phase out toxic lead ammunition in UK hunting by 2025 has failed

Possible foundations of human intelligence observed for the first time

Breast cancer death rates have stopped going down

Developing zero-waste, sustainable smart polymer materials

AI has ‘great potential’ for detecting wildfires, new study of the Amazon rainforest suggests

Magnetic catalysts enhance tumor treatment via electronic density regulation

 Quantum dot discovery for LEDs brings brighter, more eco-friendly displays

Phosphorus doping stabilizes high-energy polymeric nitrogen at ambient pressure

Maternal cannabis use triples risk of disruptive behaviour in children

Balancing Nutrition: Micronutrient study could help prevent childhood obesity in Pacific region

Lightening the load of augmented reality glasses

Sneaky clocks: uncovering Einstein’s relativity in an interacting atomic playground

The chances of anything coming from Mars

Scientists unlock clues to new treatments for muscular dystrophy

Anti-obesity drugs benefit kidney transplant recipients with type 2 diabetes

Cases of Parkinson’s disease set to reach 25 million worldwide by 2050

Throat microbiome holds clues to older Australians’ health

Diabetes drug could help cancer patients make better recovery  

Seismic study of Singapore could guide urban construction and renewable energy development

Tufts scientists develop open-source software for modeling soft materials

Repurposed ALS drug becomes imaging probe to help diagnose neurodegeneration

AI can open up beds in the ICU

Are robotic hernia repairs still in the “learning curve” phase?

New STI impacts 1 in 3 women: Landmark study reveals men are the missing link

Feeling is believing: Bionic hand “knows” what it’s touching, grasps like a human

Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation awards $4.4 million to top young scientists

Over-the-counter pain relievers linked to improved recovery from concussion

Stressed out? It may increase the risk of stroke

Nanoscale tweaks help alloy withstand high-speed impacts

AI-generated voices which sound like you are perceived as more trustworthy and likeable, with implications for deep-fakes and manipulation

[Press-News.org] The aging population and emergency departments
Demographic change is predicted to increase emergency hospital admissions and length of emergency visits