Introduction
EMERGENCY
With demographic change, there is an increase in Emergency Department (ED) presentations by patients aged 70 years and older worldwide [Many post-ED discharge intervention programs are focused on older patients at high risk for hospital return. However, prediction tools that have been developed to identify patients at risk have poor predictive accuracy, contain different predictors, and are often not suitable for clinical use [Several of these predicting factors could be addressed through specific interventions, such as patient education and community follow-up by a geriatric nurse. However, systematic reviews evaluating the effects of post-discharge interventions initiated in the ED have found that many were not effective in reducing ED re-attendances [In order to understand why these interventions are not effective in reducing URVs, more insight is needed into the reasons why older patients return to the ED. Therefore, we investigated the frequencies, associated patient and ED visit characteristics and reasons for URVs within 30 days after the index ED visit among patients aged ≥ 70 years. In addition, we examined whether specific categories of reasons for URVs were associated with the number of URVs per patient.