Age of patients admitted to Internal Medicine Departments in Spain: A twenty years perspective

Background and objective: To analyze the age of patients admitted to Spanish General Internal Medicine (IM) departments over the past 20 years with the hypothesis that patients' age has increased significantly. Patients and methods: On one hand, we analyzed the age of patients admitted in the department of the authors. Secondly we analyzed data provided by the Ministry of Health. Finally we compared a number of different articles from the late eighties with a recent series. Results: Mean age of patients in our department has increased in 19.3 years in 20 years. According to CMBD, the patients >= 75 years increased 4.4% from 2005 to 2009. When comparing the historical and recent series, the average age of the patients increased 8.3 years. Conclusions: All three sources confirm the hypothesis that patients admitted to IM are significantly older than some years ago, and that this increase in age is greater than the expected by aging of the general population. (C) 2011 Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.