[Mortality predictive factors of a clinical cohort of elderly patients].

OBJECTIVE To study the association between the main variables collected in the comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) and mortality, in a clinical cohort of elderly people referred from primary care, following standardised criteria, to a geriatric unit. Design. Retrospective cohort study. SETTING Outpatient department of a geriatric unit of a hospital in Madrid, Spain. PARTICIPANTS A total of 140 patients older than 65 years were followed up for 70 months. MAIN MEASUREMENTS We collected demographic, clinical, functional, and social variables during the CGA carried out by a multidisciplinary team. After 70 months we measured this cohort survival and we analysed the predictive factors for mortality using Cox hazard ratio analysis. RESULTS. Sixty three patients died after the 70 months of the study, and the survival median was 37 months. In the univariate analysis, age, male gender, diagnosed cancer, COPD, the Katz and Lawton indices, and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score of 35 items, were significantly associated with mortality. In the multivariate analysis we found, as predictive factors for mortality: MMSE-35 (HR=0.965; 95% CI, 0.934-0.998; P=.037); male gender (HR=2.75; 95% CI, 1.6-4.74; P=.001); Katz score (HR=1.22; 95% CI, 1.04-1.43; P=.017); Lawton score (HR=0.93; 95% CI, 0.82-1.07; P=.30). CONCLUSION Cognitive impairment is a mortality predictive factor (HR=0.65), for each point less in the MMSE-35, we observed an increase in mortality risk of 3.5% (1-HR) at 70 months, after adjustment for Katz and Lawton index and gender.