[Asthma in elderly: from basic immunology to the clinic].

Background: Asthma is a disease that has been considered mainly in children and teenagers, but due to the longer life expectancy, more elderly patients with pulmonary diseases suggestive of asthma have been detected. The diagnosis of asthma in patients over sixty years of age, becomes more complex, since there are coexistent diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, along with the difficulty for the performance of function pulmonary tests, which impact upon the adequate treatment and quality of life.

Objective: To spread and update information on the clinical usefulness of elderly asmathic patients.

[Effectiveness of reevaluation of admission of patients with poor functional status].

Introduction: Acute care hospitals are one of the healthcare settings that pose the greatest risk of inefficiency and iatrogeny in the elderly. The term "inappropriate admission" refers to those admissions that could have been dealt with in an outpatient clinic or in a hospital with a lower level of care. We designed an intervention in the Emergency Department of our hospital (Hospital Universitario de Getafe, Madrid) with the aim of reducing the percentage of inappropriate admissions in the elderly.