Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1508822
10 PATIENT SAFETY & OUTCOMES The condition behind 1.4M emergency room visits a year By Erica Carbajal P eople with Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia end up in the emergency room about 1.4 million times every year, according to recent findings from researchers at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Researchers used national data on emergency department visits among adults 65 years and older to conduct the study. e data was pulled from the 2016-19 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. Of more than 20.3 million annual ED visits among older adults, nearly 1.4 million were among patients with Alzheimer's and related dementias. "While dementia is thought of as a cognitive or memory disorder, it is the behavioral aspects of the disease such as anxiety, agitation and sleep disturbances that can cause the most stress for caregivers and patients alike," Lauren Gerlach, DO, lead study author and geriatric psychiatrist at Michigan Medicine, said in a July 24 news release. ree more findings from the study published in JAMA Neurology: • Overall, dementia was found to account for nearly 7 percent of all ED visits among older adults. • Dementia patients were twice as likely to seek emergency care for accidents and behavioral disturbances compared to patients in the same age range who did not have dementia. Researchers said behavioral issues being among the primary reasons for ER visits among dementia patients "may reflect caregiver difficulty in managing behaviors." • Dementia patients in the ED were twice as likely to receive antipsychotic medications than other ED patients over the age of 65. Researchers said the findings indicate the need to better support dementia patients' caregivers, which could ultimately help prevent emergency department visits. A proposed Medicare rule to reimburse healthcare teams for sessions that educate family caregivers on preventing and responding to distressing behaviors is one area researchers say could help prevent dementia-related crises. n Northwestern surgeons perform rare 'flipped organ' lung transplants By Mackenzie Bean S urgeons at Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine have successfully performed double lung transplants on two patients with situs inversus, a rare condition in which patients' organs in the chest and abdomen organs are in a mirror image of their normal positions. Yahaira Vega, 27, underwent the transplant April 28. She was born with a rare disorder called primary ciliary dyskinesia, which affects the tiny hairlike structures that line a person's airways. Dennis Deer, 51, received his transplant May 22. He needed the transplant after developing interstitial lung disease. "It's rare enough to perform a double-lung transplant on one patient with situs inversus, let alone two patients in less than a month at the same health system," Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute, said in an Aug. 7 news release. The patients' reversed organs made the surgeries particularly challenging, Dr. Bharat said, as surgeons had to make technical modifications for the "normal" donor lungs to fit into each patient's chest cavity. Both patients are recovering well from the surgeries and have resumed their normal lives, the release said. The medical milestone builds on Northwestern's advancements in lung transplantation. In 2020, the health system became the first in the U.S. to complete a double lung transplant on a COVID-19 patient. n Image Credit: Adobe Stock