Determining which elderly heart attack patients take longer to stand from a seated position and walk across a room may help predict who will be readmitted to the hospital within a month, according to new research in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, an American Heart Association journal.
Determining which elderly heart attack patients take longer to stand from a seated position and walk across a room may help predict who will be readmitted to the hospital within a month, according to new research in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, an American Heart Association journal.
Nearly 1 in 5 older adults hospitalized for heart attack is readmitted for heart failure, bleeding, irregular heart beat or other complications within 30 days of discharge, which is costly and detrimental to patients’ quality of life.
“In general, there has been a lot of interest in preventing hospital readmissions among older patients within 30 days of discharge from the hospital, because of how common and costly they are,” said study author John A. Dodson, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of Medicine and Population Health, and director of the NYU Geriatric Cardiology program in New York City. “Heart attack is one of the conditions specifically identified by Medicare as a priority for readmissions reduction, but so far it’s been challenging to predict specifically which patients with heart attack will get readmitted.”
Read more at American Heart Association
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