Hamburg / Cologne - underweight, missing teeth, ulcers. The health status of many elderly people is frightening. Frequently they die neglected and lonely. This is the result of a new study.
The death brings to light some truth. For while many old, lonely people have no one to whom they can confide in, their bodies often tell a lot about her last months. Professor Klaus Püschel, Head of Legal Medicine at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, has investigated more than 8,500 corpses of people who were older than 60 years. The results could be transferred to the whole Federal Republic. And they are alarming. "Old people often die alone and neglected." Particularly dramatic is the physical condition of many dead.
The results:
• were underweight, 15 percent of the average 81-year-old man.
• With a gastric tube through the abdominal wall were fed artificially for nearly seven percent - in third was the inflamed skin at the entry point.
• A Druckliegegeschwür (decubitus) had one in eight. A total of 3.3 percent were the wounds even to the bone.
• No teeth or dentures, six percent of deaths in the mouth. Only 2.7 percent had a complete dentition with no dental restorations.
"Druckliegegeschwüre are in care in North Rhine-Westphalia a big problem," says Lothar scratch by the Hospital Association NRW. The staffing situation was extremely tense. Even Christoph Treiß, Managing Director of the National Federation free outpatient nursing NRW, knows the problem. At the same time he stressed: "NRW is not care-Wild-West." Eugen Brysch, Chief of the German Hospice Foundation, calls for tougher sanctions: "Illegal parking is punishable in Germany consistently than injury to people in need of care."
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