Turkish Journal of
GERIATRICS

Ankara Fizik Tedavi ve Rehabilitasyon Eğitim Araştırma Hastanesi - ANKARA In this study, the diagnoses, accompanying diseases, the doses of the pharmaceutics they have used, their duration of hospitalization in the rehabilitation clinic, and the results of rehabilitation of 165 patients, beyond 65 age, that have been hospitalized in our hospital between 1998-200 have been retrospectively studied referring to file data. Most of the cases were hemiplegic patients secondary to cerebrovascular accident (84.9%). These were followed by patients with medulla spinalis lesions (4.2 %), with operated hip fractures (1.8 %) and with osteoarthritis. Hypertension in the 75.8% of cases, heart disease in 34.5%, recurrent cerebrovascular accident in 14.4%, DM in 25.5%, dementia in 6.7%, accompanied the present disease. In terms of drugs use only 4.8% of patients have been using any drug, but 85.5% of patients have been using at least two or more groups of drug. Secondary complications of actual disease occurred in 77.0% of patients. When looking functional ambulation levels of patients at discharge, most of them (50.9%) could ambulate with wheel chair, while 46.7% of patients were able to walk with orthesis and 7.3% were able to walk independently. As a conclusion, it appears among geriatric cases hospitalized in our hospital, most of the cases are hemiplegic patients depending on cerebrovascular accident, all having various chronic diseases in their past, that they have used pharmaceutics for long time, and benefited from rehabilitation program at a medium level. In addition, we believe ti1at such studies and researches could provide fundamental consequences in developing health policies in' our country where the aged-population constantly increases, with respect to healthy ageing and need for rehabilitation of diseased elderly. Keywords : Ageing, Cerebrovascular accident, Hemiplegia, Geriatric rehabilitation