Geriatric evaluation of oncological elderly patients.

Cancer has a high prevalence in older age. The management of cancer in the older aged person is an increasingly common problem. Age may be construed as a progressive loss of stress tolerance, due to decline in functional reserve of multiple organ systems, high prevalence of comorbid conditions, limited socioeconomic support, reduced cognition, and higher prevalence of depression.

What is the frailty in elderly? Value and significance of the multidimensional assessments.

Authors perform a critical revision of the concept of frailty in elderly going back to its first indication (1978). It is a particular phenotypic condition, characterized by advanced age, clinically unstable polypathologies in evolution, with cognitive disturbances, often very severe, loss of auto sufficiency and the critical socio-economic conditions. The diagnostic validity, both in the definition of the deficits and in the evaluation of the declines in the fundamental functions should be underlined.

The role of diabetes and aging in the determinism of hypertension and the related cerebrovascular complications.

Epidemiological studies carried out on a large sample (3191 elderly and 640 centenarians) with identical criteria and applying the actual diagnostic standards, have evidenced a high, statistically significant prevalence of diabetes mellitus type 2 (DMT2) (18.84%) in the elderly, as compared to the centenarians (7.50%).