Ailing Elderly Benefit From Specialized Care
By: Associated Press
The Washington Post, March 21, 2002
Frail, elderly patients do better and feel better
with specialized geriatric care than they do with regular treatment, but
they do not live any longer, according to the largest study yet on the
subject.
Geriatric specialists hope the study by the Veterans
Affairs Department will give a boost to their relatively new, understaffed
field of care.
Patients who received specialized geriatric care
reported significantly less pain and far more improvement in their mental
health -- at no greater cost -- a year after leaving a hospital.
The patients were treated by geriatric teams that
included a geriatrician, social worker and nurse. A geriatrician is a
doctor trained to focus on the common conditions and special needs of the
elderly.
In the study, published in today's New England
Journal of Medicine, researchers picked 1,388 patients age 65 and older
who were sick at one of 11 veterans hospitals. They were randomly split
into groups for geriatric or regular treatment, while they were in the
hospital and after their release.
By the time of release from the hospital, the group
treated by inpatient geriatric teams showed a range of advantages in
physical and basic living capabilities. After one year, however, those
advantages evaporated, except in the categories of pain and mental health.
Aging Boomers at Risk
For Eye Diseases
The aging of the large baby boom generation could
mean a doubling in the number of blind Americans because growing older is
a major factor in developing eye disease, a National Eye Institute study
released yesterday concludes.
The study lists four primary threats:
• Diabetic retinopathy, a common complication of
diabetes in which blood vessels in the retina break, leak or become
blocked, impairing vision over time. It affects nearly half of all people
with diabetes to some extent and risk increases with age. About 5.3
million Americans are now affected.
• Age-related macular degeneration affects 1.6
million Americans. It primarily affects the part of the retina responsible
for sharp central vision.
• A cataract is a clouding of the eye's lens. Most
cataracts appear with advancing age, but there are additional factors,
such as smoking, diabetes and excessive exposure to sunlight. Cataracts
are the leading cause of blindness in the world, and they affect nearly
20.5 million Americans age 40 and older. By age 80, more than half of all
Americans have developed cataracts.
• Glaucoma causes gradual damage to the optic
nerve, which carries visual information between the eye and the brain.
Because the loss of vision is not noticed until significant nerve damage
has occurred, as many as half of all people with glaucoma are unaware of
it. About 2.2 million Americans age 40 and older have been diagnosed with
glaucoma, and an additional 2 million do not know they have it, the report
said.
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