DIGESTIVE DISEASES IN ELDERLY AND FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH LENGTH OF STAY IN THE HEPATOLOGY AND GASTROENTEROLOGY UNIT...

The digestive pathologies are frequent in the elderly and often have a latent and atypical symptomatology.

To assess the epidemiological and evolutionary current data on digestive diseases in the elderly, and look for factors associated with length of hospital stay.

Retrospective study of 10 years, including patients aged 60 and over hospitalized for digestive diseases in the Gastroenterology Department of the Campus Teaching Hospital of Lome, Togo.

Of 5933 hospitalized patients, there were 1054 patients (17.8%) aged 60 years and over with a digestive pathology (526 men and 528 women). The average age was 69.5 years ±7.9 ranging from 60 to 105 years. The average length of hospital stay was 7.45 days ±6.2 ranging from 1 to 44 days. HIV prevalence was 2.4%. In order of decreasing frequency, there were hepatobiliary pathologies (54.3%) with a predominance of cirrhosis and liver cancer, eso-gastroduodenal pathologies (23.1%) with predominance of ulcers, gastric cancer and esophageal cancer, intestinal pathologies (8.7%) with a predominance of food poisoning, pancreatic pathologies (4.2%) with a predominance of pancreatic cancer and peritoneal pathologies (1.4%). Gastric cancer was the second digestive cancer found after liver cancer. Pancreatic head cancer was the second disease after gastric cancer which need a transfer in a surgical ward (P=0.031). There were 204 deaths (19.4%). The longest duration of hospitalization was due to gastric cancer (9.16 days).

Hepatobiliary diseases were the most frequent and associated with a high death rate and a long hospital stay.