[Elderly seeking emergency care should receive special care. Contact patterns and underlying diagnoses in...

We investigated and documented the most common presenting complaints of elderly patients ≥80 years of age in Västerbotten at the emergency department of Umeå University hospital. We found that the ten most common presenting complaints represented more than half of all emergency department visits. The three most common presenting complaints were abdominal pain, chest pain and dyspnoea. On average, around 80 % of all patients were admitted to a ward and for the three most common presenting complaints the number was even higher. The main conclusions from this study were that a surprisingly high proportion of elderly patients are admitted to a ward after the emergency department visit at Umeå University hospital and that patients seeking with one of the three most common presenting complaints often had complex discharge diagnoses involving typically chronic geriatric diseases which were hidden behind general presenting complaints.