How often do you find yourself making trips to the emergency room, urgent care or need to be immediately hospitalized?

We all know someone who seems to frequent emergency rooms and needs hospitalizations. In some instances, it’s not warranted, but in other cases, it can’t be helped.

Then there are people like myself who avoid emergency rooms and hospitals if at all possible. I grew up as a cowboy with the expression of cowboy up, meaning we doctor ourselves and then get back up and back to work. I’ve been married for 47 ½ years and have only been at an emergency room twice and hospitalized overnight once. Over the years, I’ve set most of my broken bones, taken out my own stitches, drained fluid from my knee, gave myself a tetanus shot and even drew my own blood for a flustered nurse.

Sadly, I know someone who seems to live for the sole purpose of going to urgent care and emergency room. To give you an idea, the local urgent care center won’t have anything more to do with her and automatically sends her to the hospital emergency room. By the age of four, her daughter knew the names of the people at urgent care and the emergency room.

Do these trips to the emergency room or need to be hospitalized have any impact on our mental health, other than worrying about how much it’s going to cost?

According to a recent report, the older we get, the more impact emergency room visits and immediate hospitalizations have on our mental wellbeing:

“Emergency and urgent hospitalizations are associated with an increased rate of cognitive decline in older adults, report researchers at Rush University Medical Center. Results of their study, published in the Jan. 11, 2019, online issue of Neurology shows that hospitalization may be a more of a major risk factor for long-term cognitive decline in older adults than previously recognized.”

Bryan James, Ph.D., an epidemiologist and in the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center and an assistant professor in the Rush Department of Internal Medicine stated:

“We found that those who have non-elective (emergency or urgent) hospitalizations and who have not previously been diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease had a rapid decline in cognitive function (i.e., thinking abilities) compared to the prehospital rates. By comparison, people who were never hospitalized and those who had elective hospitalizations did not experience the drastic decline in cognitive function.”

“We saw a clear distinction: non-elective admissions drive the association between hospitalization and long-term changes in cognitive function in later life, while elective admissions do not necessarily carry the same risk of negative cognitive outcomes. These findings have important implications for medical decision making and care of older adults.”

“While recognizing that all medical procedures carry some degree of risk, this study implies that planned hospital encounters may not be as dangerous to the cognitive health of older persons as emergency or urgent situations.”

The researchers have no idea why such emergency and urgent hospitalizations play a role in the decline of cognitive function, only to say that their study does show a link. Naturally, further studies will be needed to find the link, but in the meantime, all I can add is to avoid an emergency and urgent hospitalizations if at all possible.