Geriatrics

Elderly people are often suffering from two or more chronic diseases, more frequently cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, metabolic syndrome and cancer. These most frequent chronic diseases share largely preventable risk factors, the foremost important being smoking and obesity, and should be linked to chronic systemic inflammation. Coexisting chronic diseases affect the course of the first disease and alter the efficacy and safety of its management. Learning to manage a variety of treatments while maintaining quality of life can be problematic and the ageing of the population has increased the prevalence of chronic diseases, which represent a huge proportion of human illness.