[Identification of patients at risk for adverse outcomes in emergency department: which screening tools?]

Taking care of elderly patients is difficult in emergency settings. Such patients are at risk of becoming non autonomous or to be rehospitalized. An individualized evaluation makes it possible to decrease this risk but is time consuming, which represents a problem when it is crucial to maintain the flux of patients. Several tools allowing the tracking down of patients at risk have been developed with the aim to identify those who are likely to benefit from a management and those who could, on the opposite, be discharged without performing investigations. The aim of this review is to depict the different tools available to track down patients at risk and to evaluate their efficacy and usefulness in an emergency setting.