Patients admitted to hospital from care homes are at higher risk of dehydration, study finds

Care home residents are 10 times more likely to be dehydrated when admitted to hospital than patients who live in their own home, a retrospective observational study has found. As a result, care home patients seem to have significantly greater risks of in-hospital mortality.

The research, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine,1 included 21 610 patients aged over 65 who were admitted to a London trust hospital over a two year period from 2011 to 2013. Patients had …