In-Hospital Elderly Mortality in a Nigerian Tertiary Health Care Center

Introduction: The elderly represent a significant proportion of the populace and their mortality index is of public health significance. With dearth of vital registration, in-hospital based studies remains a desirable alternative. This study hopes to determine the epidemiologic pattern of elderly mortality with respect to sex, age, date and cause of death.  Methods: This is descriptive retrospective study of elderly deaths among hospitalized patients in a Nigerian Tertiary Care Center. The age, sex, date and causes of death were analyzed using SPSS 21 and results summarized in tables and figures. Results: Elderly death constitute 24.7% of all hospital deaths with a crude mortality of 25.3%. Males constitute majority of the cases and 81.6% of the deaths occur within the 7th and 8th decades. Non-communicable diseases, communicable diseases and injuries constitute 80%, 12.5% and 7.6% of the cases respectively. Major specific causes of death include cerebrovascular accident, chronic kidney disease, chronic liver disease, sepsis, diabetes mellitus, road traffic accident, prostate and colorectal cancers accounting for 28.8%, 8.7%, 5.7%, 5.3%, 4.9%, 3.8%, 3.4% and 3.0% of all cases respectively. Conclusion: Mortality rate among in-hospital elderly patients are relatively high. More male are affected than females with causes attributed, in descending order to non- communicable, communicable diseases and external injuries. Major specific causes of death include cerebrovascular accident, chronic liver disease, chronic kidney disease, diabetes mellitus, cancers, sepsis and road traffic injury. Understanding the disease pattern will go a long way guiding social policy and healthcare interventions on the elderly population.