Dtsch Arztebl Int
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Elderly patients are a growing and vulnerable group with an elevated perioperative risk. Perioperative treatment pathways that take these patients' special risks and requirements into account are often not implemented in routine clinical practice. ⋯ The evidence-based and guideline-consistent care of elderly patients requires not only close interdisciplinary, interprofessional, and cross-sectoral collaboration, but also the restructuring and optimization of habitual procedural pathways in the hospital. Elderly patients' special needs can only be met by a treatment concept in which the entire perioperative phase is considered as a single, coherent process.
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Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) mainly affects older persons and is the commonest form of leukemia, with an incidence of 6 cases per 100 000 per- sons per year. In Germany, approximately 1000 men and 850 women die of CLL each year. ⋯ Recent progress in the development of novel treatment options gives hope that CLL may soon be a controllable disease. Even at present, chemoimmuno- therapy can achieve a progression-free survival of more than eight years in certain genetically defined subgroups of CLL patients.