Be Alert, Elderly Vulnerable In Hospital Infections And Can Trigger Complications

JAKARTA - Elderly people or the elderly are very vulnerable to infection with the Respiratory Syncitial Virus (RSV). Hospital infections in the elderly can even trigger complications of dangerous diseases.

This was conveyed by an internal medicine specialist, dr. Robert Sinto, SpPD, K-PTI, DPhil, FINASIM, FHEA. He said that RSV infection is prone to the elderly who are in good health. This is because in the elderly their immune system has decreased, which makes the virus easy to enter.

"So even elderly patients, healthy elderly people, if they are exposed to RSV, regardless of whether they have comorbidities or not, it has made the risk higher to get into severe infections," said doctor Robert in Sudirman, Jakarta, on Wednesday, December 3, 2025.

According to a study that looked at 302 adults aged 60 years and over who were hospitalized due to RSV, 32 percent showed poor results in the assessment of daily activities after six months of hospitalization.

One of the three elderly people who were hospitalized due to the RSV had difficulty carrying out daily activities such as dress, going to the bathroom, to eating independently.

This can make it easy for the elderly to lose their appetite, and there is a risk of lack of nutritional intake, which can make their bodies more vulnerable so that complications of disease increase.

"It turns out that the virus can induce disorders in blood clots, triggering many of these factors, heart failure, heart attacks. The potential becomes out of control, can shock, blood pressure drops," he explained.

Therefore, it is very important to prevent RSV infection in the elderly. Starting from the implementation of clean and healthy life (PHBS), as well as vaccinations that increase prevention.

Doctor Robert said that according to the guidance of the Food and Drug Supervisory Agency (BPOM), the RSV vaccine can be given to the elderly aged 60 years and over.

"So the figure (RSV vaccination) is approximately 80 percent to prevent it from becoming a severe infection. So, this illustrates preventing symptoms of RSV and hospitalization, preventing him from having symptoms or preventing RSV from being symptomatic or preventing him from being hospitalized," said Doctor Robert.