Older age, aggressiveness of care, and survival for seriously ill, hospitalized adults

Background: Older age is associated with less aggressive treatment and high er short-term mortality due to serious illness. It is not known whether les s aggressive care contributes to this survival disadvantage in elderly pers ons. Objective: To determine the effect of age on short-term survival, independe nt of baseline patient characteristics and aggressiveness of care. Design: Secondary analysis of data from a prospective cohort study. Setting: Five academic medical centers participating in SUPPORT (Study to U nderstand Prognoses and Preferences for Outcomes and Risks of Treatments). Patients: 9105 adults hospitalized with one of nine serious illnesses assoc iated with an average 6-month mortality rate of 50%. Measurements: Survival through 180 days of follow-up. In Cox proportional h azards modeling, adjustment was made for patient sex; ethnicity; income; ba seline physical function; severity of illness; intensity of hospital resour ce use; presence of do-not-resuscitate orders on study day 1; and presence and timing of decisions to withhold transfer to the intensive care unit, ma jor surgery, dialysis blood transfusion, vasopressors, and tube feeding. Results: The mean (+/- SD) patient age was 63 +/- 16 years, 44% of patients were female, and 16% were black. Overall survival to 6 months was 53%. In analyses that adjusted for sex, ethnicity, income, baseline functional stat us, severity of illness, and aggressiveness of care, each additional year o f age increased the hazard of death by 1.0% (hazard ratio, 1.010 [95% CI, 1 .007 to 1.013]) for patients 18 to 70 years of age and by 2.0% (hazard rati o, 1.020 [CI, 1.013 to 1.026]) for patients older than 70 years of age. Adj usted estimates of age-specific 6-month mortality rates were 44% for 55-yea r-old patients, 48% for 65-year-old patients, 53% for 75-year-old patients, and 60% for 85-year old patients. Similar results were obtained in analyse s that did not adjust for aggressiveness of care. Acute physiology and diag nosis had much larger relative contributions to prognosis than age. Conclusions: We found a modest independent association between patient age and short-term survival of serious illness. This age effect was not explain ed by the current practice of providing less aggressive care to elderly pat ients.