Geriatric Emergency Protocol Book: A Comprehensive Guide is a practical, protocol-driven guide to the emergency care of older adults, written for the realities of Indian emergency departments and created jointly by the Indian Academy of Geriatrics and the Society of Acute Care, Trauma and Emergency Medicine.
Older patients present atypically, deteriorate silently, and rarely fit adult algorithms designed for the young — the infarct that never announces itself, the sepsis hiding behind a normal temperature, the soft abdomen concealing a catastrophe. Every chapter is kept stepwise and bedside-ready, written for the resident at 3 am as much as for the consultant, and set against Indian conditions: late presentation, families as both caregivers and decision-makers, uneven prehospital care, and the distance between a metro tertiary centre and a district hospital.
Coverage runs from frailty screening, delirium recognition and medication review through the emergencies themselves — falls, trauma and orthogeriatrics, cardiovascular, respiratory, infectious, neurological, psychiatric, oncologic, metabolic and environmental — and on to toxicology, nutritional deficiency and anaemia, discharge planning and care transitions, nonspecific complaints and missed diagnoses, and end-of-life decisions.
- Each chapter distils current evidence into clear, actionable pathways that can be applied under pressure, rather than leaving the clinician to derive them mid-resuscitation.
- The 3Ds chapter separates delirium, dementia and depression with a differentiating table, the DELIRIUMS mnemonic, the 4AT screening instrument with interpretation, and a delirium decision flowchart for the emergency department.
- Falls and frailty are aligned with the World Guidelines for Falls Prevention 2022, so screening and prevention follow a current international standard.
- Chapters cover the ground emergency training often passes over — polypharmacy and prescribing in the elderly, nutritional deficiency and anaemia, nonspecific complaints and missed diagnoses, elder abuse, and care transitions after the acute episode.
- A closing annexures chapter collects the reference tools and quick-reference charts in one place for the resuscitation room.
Key Features:
- 17 chapters written jointly by contributors from the Indian Academy of Geriatrics and SACTEM, drawn from AIIMS centres, SGPGIMS, IGIMS Patna, Medical College Kolkata, Madras Medical College, AFMC Pune and leading private hospitals.
- Per-chapter apparatus of numbered tables, mnemonics, validated screening instruments, drug tables and decision flowcharts.
- Rapid-recap tables, such as the 30-second chapter snapshot that closes the delirium chapter.
- Dedicated chapters on pain, palliative care and end-of-life decisions, and on discharge planning, transfers and care transitions.
- A closing annexures chapter of reference tools and quick-reference charts.
