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Nonspecific Disease Presentation: The Emergency Department Perspective

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Geriatric Emergency Medicine

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Abstract

Older patients often present to the emergency department with nonspecific complaints (NSCs). In most cases, nonspecific complaints are caused by a variety of interacting underlying medical conditions. Nevertheless, analyses of the most common underlying conditions between several studies revealed a high consistency. NSCs are commonly caused by infections, water and electrolyte disorders, heart failure, anaemia, malignancies, and/or cognitive impairment. Because the underlying conditions are numerous, the diagnostic workup of patients presenting with NSCs is difficult. We show that classic diagnostic approaches such as history taking and physical examination in patients presenting with NSCs in the emergency department (ED) may not yield conclusive working hypotheses. To narrow down the wide array of differential diagnoses during workup, we propose to focus on the three most common groups of underlying conditions. Moreover, we provide some examples of group-specific characteristics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Emergency Medicine, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Alexandra Malinovska, Christian Nickel & Roland Bingisser

Authors
  1. Alexandra Malinovska
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  2. Christian Nickel
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  3. Roland Bingisser
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexandra Malinovska .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Emergency Department, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Christian Nickel

  2. Department of Emergency Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Abdelouahab Bellou

  3. Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Simon Conroy

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Malinovska, A., Nickel, C., Bingisser, R. (2018). Nonspecific Disease Presentation: The Emergency Department Perspective. In: Nickel, C., Bellou, A., Conroy, S. (eds) Geriatric Emergency Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19318-2_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19318-2_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-19317-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-19318-2

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