Factors associated with the occurrence of adverse events in critical elderly patients.

Objective:: to identify the factors associated with the occurrence of adverse events in critical elderly patients admitted to intensive care unit according to demographic and clinical characteristics.

Method:: a retrospective cohort study was conducted in nine units of a teaching hospital. Data were collected from medical records and from monitoring of nursing shift change. We used the t-test/Mann-Whitney, chi-square and logistic regression to test associations. Significance level of 5% was used.

Results:: out of the 315 elderly, 94 experienced events. Those who experienced events were men (60.6%) with mean age of 70.7 years, length of hospital stay of 10.6 days and survivors (61.7%). Most of the 183 events were clinical processes and procedures (37.1%). There was an association between adverse event and length of hospital stay in the unit (p=0.000; OR=1.10, 95% CI [1.06, 1.14]).

Conclusion:: the identification of associated events and factors in the elderly subsidize the prevention of these occurrences before the vulnerability of this age group.