[More risks and fewer treatments: the paradox about elderly patients with acute coronary syndromes].

The majority of patients with acute coronary syndromes are elderly subjects. They are at a high risk of events; in fact, they usually arrive to hospital late and this delay nullifies the advantages of reperfusion; they often present with a large and complicated acute myocardial infarction and the short-term mortality for such patients is 3-5 times higher than that observed for younger subjects. Although they are a high-risk population, paradoxically they receive thrombolytic therapy, beta-blocker drugs and acetyl salicylic acid less frequently than younger patients and they are rarely submitted to interventional procedures. In this overview, we analyze the reasons of this paradox and we suggest some management guidelines. The risk of bleeding associated with thrombolytic drugs is the main reason justifying the limited use of reperfusion therapy in elderly patients. The identification, in each patient, of the risk factors for bleeding permits stratification of such patients into different classes of risk. This may be of help to the physician in distinguishing those patients who are candidates for thrombolytic therapy from those who are not, reserving for the latter other therapeutic strategies such as primary coronary angioplasty. In elderly patients with unstable angina or myocardial infarction, a careful and early risk stratification should serve as a guide when establishing the indication for interventional procedures. The latter should be encouraged in those patients in whom the risk of bleeding is high and whose overall clinical picture does not contraindicate such a therapeutic strategy. In such cases, invasive therapy can really improve the patient's quality of life.