Emergency department (ED) admissions of patients 75 years and older are consistently increasing. Older patients suffer from atypical symptomatology, spend more time, and are more at risk of adverse outcomes (early readmission, functional decline, institutionalization and death) than younger people. The identification of geriatric syndromes like cognitive decline can improve the management of such patients and decrease the rate of the outcomes. In ED, screening tools developed to detect these geriatric problems have to be quick, easy to use and to present a high sensibility. This article aims at reviewing the literature about the ED-validated screening tools that could be applied in practice.