Clinical interventions in aging
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Management of geriatric patients would be simplified if a universally accepted definition of frailty for clinical use was defined. Among definitions of frailty, Fried frailty phenotype criteria constitute a common reference frame for many geriatric studies. However, this reference frame has been tested primarily in elderly patients presenting with relatively good health status. ⋯ Fried frailty phenotype criteria seem useful for geriatric inpatient assessment, despite diagnostic limitations. High prevalence of frailty among geriatric inpatients suggests that evaluation for frailty should be considered a part of the comprehensive geriatric assessment.
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Many age-associated diseases are accompanied by pain. There is no doubt that pain is underrecognized among elderly nursing home residents and the diagnosing of pain is a real challenge in subjects with dementia. The aim of the study was to characterize analgesic use among nursing home residents and to delineate the putative associations between pain management and cognitive functions of elderly persons. ⋯ The rate of subjects who were not receiving any pain treatment was higher in residents with MMSE between 0 and 9 points than in those with MMSE between 24 and 30 points (P=0.0151). Furthermore, ten residents (9.1%) with severe dementia were treated with analgesics PRN. The results of our study point to a remarkably low use of analgesics in nursing home residents in Poland and indicate a need to introduce pain evaluation and monitoring of drug treatment appropriateness as a standard procedure in the geriatric assessment in nursing homes.
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Rheumatic diseases, irrespective of etiology and clinical course, influence different areas of a patient's life. Adapting to disability and limitations caused by an illness is very difficult for many patients. The main goal of a therapeutic procedure should be improvement of health-related quality of life (QoL). ⋯ Patients with OA, despite their average older age, had a higher evaluated QoL than patients with RA. Overall QoL in terms of mental functioning in both rheumatic diseases was assessed at a higher level than in the area of physical functioning.
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Oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD) is a highly prevalent and growing condition in the older population. Although OD may cause very severe complications, it is often not detected, explored, and treated. Older patients are frequently unaware of their swallowing dysfunction which is one of the reasons why the consequences of OD, ie, aspiration, dehydration, and malnutrition, are regularly not attributed to dysphagia. ⋯ Recently, the fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing is increasingly utilized because it has several advantages. Besides making a diagnosis, fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing is applied to evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic maneuvers and texture modification of food and liquids. In addition to swallowing training and nutritional interventions, newer rehabilitation approaches of stimulation techniques are showing promise and may significantly impact future treatment strategies.
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The global population of multimorbid older people is growing steadily. Multimorbidity is the principal cause of complex polypharmacy, which in turn is the prime risk factor for inappropriate prescribing and adverse drug reactions and events. Those who prescribe for older frailer multimorbid people are particularly prone to committing prescribing errors of various kinds. ⋯ Carrying out a structured medication review aimed at optimizing pharmacotherapy in this vulnerable patient population presents a major challenge. Another challenge is to design, build, validate, and test by clinical trials suitably versatile and efficient software engines that can reliably and swiftly perform complex medication reviews in older multimorbid people. The European Union-funded SENATOR and OPERAM clinical trials commencing in 2016 will examine the impact of customized software engines in reducing medication-related morbidity, avoidable excess cost, and rehospitalization in older multimorbid people.