[A multidisciplinary program for the treatment and follow up of depression in ambulatory elderly]

Abstract

Depression is a common disorder in the elderly population; with significant elevated rates in terms of morbidity and mortality. Nonetheless it continues to be a subdiagnosticated disease with poor outcomes due to lack in the effectiveness of follow up. We developed collaborative intervention programs for elderly people in primary care at Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires designing a randomized controlled trial in the ambulatory setting. Patients were recruited for an initial comprehensive geriatric evaluation, and then randomly assigned to the program intervention (n=18) or usual care (n=19). At 6 months, 55.5% of intervention patients had a 50% or greater reduction in depressive symptoms from baseline compared with 31.5% of those on usual care. Although the reduction of the outcomes of depressive symptoms is not statistically significative, these are preliminary data. We believe there is a trend toward better results with regard to improvements in depressive symptoms in patients in the intervention group, and that this will achieve statistical significance as the number of subjects recruited is increased in the course of the trial.