Dermatological Emergency Cases in Geriatric Patients: A 3-year Multicenter Study of Three National Referral Hospitals in Indonesia

BACKGROUND: Dermatological emergency is a condition requiring immediate identification and treatment to reduce mortality and morbidity. There are several dermatoses resulting in emergency room (ER) visits frequently demonstrated by the geriatric population. However, there is a lack of data about elderly with dermatological presentation seen at the ER in Indonesia.

AIM: This retrospective study aims to identify the prevalence of dermatological emergency cases in the elderly at three national referral hospitals in Indonesia within 3 years.

METHODS: The sample was geriatric patients who came and/or were consulted by the ER to dermatology and venereology (DV) department. The data (e.g., age, sex, history taking, physical findings, and diagnoses) were collected from medical record from each hospital and presented as a descriptive data.

RESULTS: This study showed that there were only 37% of all geriatric emergency dermatological consultations from 2017 to 2020.

CONCLUSION: This study concluded that there were more than half non-emergent cases of 3-year period consultation. This condition may raise the need of better training about true emergency and standardized curricula of emergency dermatological presentations in geriatric patients.