PHYSIOTHERAPY IN GERIATRICS - ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN OVERALL TREATMENT MANAGEMENT

Abstract

As UN research indicates, populations in approx. 40% of the world's countries presently meet the criteria of demographic old age. It is estimated that by 2050, those criteria will have applied to 84% of them, out of which 65% will have entered an advanced stage. Data current for 2017 put the estimated number of seniors around the world at approx. 962 million, i.e. 13% of the world's population. Population ageing process has already reached its top dynamics in Poland. Both international studies, and our own research experience imply that only an interdisciplinary and holistic approach to the seniors may help fully appreciate overall complexity of this challenge, and consequently offer an adequate platform for mapping out effective therapeutic management. Provision of a scope of wide-ranging, physiotherapeutic regimens for the seniors requires of any attending therapeutic team a specialist body of knowledge, pertinent expertise in geriatrics and physiotherapy, and plenty of hands-on skills. Physiotherapy in geriatrics is a complex, teamwork-based approach targeted at the seniors of appreciably reduced functional capabilities, and/or burdened with concomitant risk factors for a number of diseases, and/or prone to sustaining other adverse incidents (e.g. falls) typical for older age. In physiotherapeutic management offered to the seniors, as opposed to other age groups, by far the most essential issue consists in multiple concomitant diseases and polypragmacy. After a patient has been diagnosed by an attending physician, and his functional capabilities have been assessed by a physiotherapist, the therapeutic team should primarily focus upon securing for him the most essential goals, as identified at the time. Increased life expectancy raises a number of questions and challenges, to be urgently addressed by the medical sciences; the most basic and pragmatic question being - how are physicians, physiotherapists, and other health care professionals presently prepared to deal effectively with the seniors in terms of the actual treatment management, and a scope of physiotherapeutic interventions urgently required?