Procena stanja starih osoba u gerijatriji

Abstract

Elderly people are characterized by certain peculiarities evolving as a consequence of the process of ageing and relate to the all components of health. Geriatric assessment includes an objective view of the health condition in elderly people, taking into consideration their peculiarities, and it provides a suitable approach to their treatment and their health care. The treatment and health care of elderly patients are based on the comprehensive geriatric estimation which should be done within a team. Due to a number of reasons the geriatric estimation is very significant for the old people, their family, medical staff, health prevention system, narrow and wide social community; the reasons include greater diagnostic accuracy, improvement of the functional status of elderly people, improvement of the health condition of patients, decrease in the morbidity and mortality rate in elderly people, decrease in the need for permanent accommodation of the elderly people, more frequent use of home care and social service, more rational medication prescription, decrease in neglect within health protection, improvement of life quality of old people, lower expenses used for taking care of elderly people, etc. The assessment of the old people condition requires the knowledge from several areas, each of which is multidimensional: functional status (everyday activities and instrumental everyday activities); mental health; physical health; social sources; economic sources; environment conditions; problems of people providing health care.