Do patients labelled as ‘failure to cope at home’ have acute medical needs? A multicentre retrospective study in two French emergency departments
Abstract
Abstract Background “Failure to cope at home” (FTC) is a non-specific label without a specific definition. Its French equivalent, “maintien à domicile difficile”, is frequently used in emergency departments (ED), but the clinical meaning and outcomes associated with this label remain poorly described in this context. This term is sometimes used as the main diagnosis of care and could masking a medical condition. This study aims to assess the clinical and social characteristics of patients presenting with FTC term in EDs. Methods A retrospective study was conducted at Tours and Orléans University Hospitals Center from January 1 to December 31, 2022. Patients aged 18 or older with a documented FTC label were included. We described demographics, comorbidities, frailty burden, ED characteristics, acute medical conditions, hospitalisations, post-discharge outcomes and mortality. Results A total of 667 emergency admissions (EA) involving 614 patients were analysed. The population was predominantly older, with a mean age of 80.9 ± 11.2 years, and 348 patients (57.2%) were female. Neurocognitive disorders, psychiatric illness, and stroke were the most frequent medical histories. Over half of the patients lived alone (55.8%), and 91.7% resided in their own homes. Hospitalisation occurred after 485 emergency admission (71.0%). Only 6.4% (n = 40) of ED admissions had no medical problems other than the FTC label. Overall, 348 EA (54.5%) resulted in return home at hospital discharge, and…
Read the paper
Related studies
- The Matrisome: In Silico Definition and In Vivo Characterization by Proteomics of Normal and Tumor Extracellular Matrices
- The Escherichia coli MG1655 in silico metabolic genotype: Its definition, characteristics, and capabilities
- In silico pharmacology for drug discovery: methods for virtual ligand screening and profiling
- In silico prediction of splice-altering single nucleotide variants in the human genome
- In silico clinical trials: how computer simulation will transform the biomedical industry
- In silico optimization of a guava antimicrobial peptide enables combinatorial exploration for peptide design
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.