The overall age distribution of ICU admissions is similar between the United States and the United Kingdom, but the United States admits many more very elderly patients with acute medical conditions.
Many will be angry, especially the very elderly, for some of whom smartphone banking and contactless cards hold few attractions.
Very elderly readers may remember that, many years ago, stores would offer to deliver any large item "at your convenience".
It is true that with roughly a million elderly people in such facilities, many very old and in poor health, tragedies will inevitably occur.
Conventional wisdom holds that ICUs in the United States are more likely to admit very elderly patients than ICUs in many other developed countries.
Also, many studies included patients over 65 years and not only very elderly patients [ 4, 22].
In very elderly people, the diagnosis of "death from natural causes" means many competing causes (diseases) simultaneously.
Selection bias cannot be excluded, but other than being younger, the baseline characteristics of those studied did not appear exceptional; many patients who declined or could not be contacted had simply moved, or were very elderly.
As in many European countries the Dutch population is ageing and the percentage of hospital admissions attributable to the very elderly rose between 2005 and 2014.
Nobody except perhaps the very elderly is more marginalised.
