The idea that a simple blood can diagnose Alzheimer’s disease is getting an enormous amount of attention. And someday, these tests may have important benefits. But before you run to your doctor demanding a blood draw, keep in mind that this test has important limitations. Much of the buzz is over new research by Sebastian Palmqvist (paywall) of Lund University [...]
After a half-century as a Medicare benefit, hospice care still has had only limited success in improving the quality of patients’ lives as they approach their deaths. While more people are enrolling in hospice (about 1.7 million in 2020), they often do so only days before dying. Thus, they fail to benefit from the best of what hospice has to [...]
You might think that the aging of the Baby Boom generation, with the Gen Xers following close behind, would make geriatric medicine a popular specialty. Almost as attractive, perhaps, as orthopedic surgery. But you’d be very, very wrong. In 2000, there were only about 10,000 board-certified geriatricians to care for 35 million Americans age 65 or older. That was bad [...]
We know how the Covid-19 pandemic killed older adults. We are still learning about its other effects on seniors. And the picture is both complex and often difficult to look at. A new study by Michael Barnett of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and colleagues (paywall) finds that residents of nursing homes with active cases of [...]
One of every three older Americans falls every year. Among those 75 and older, the number of falls-related deaths tripled to more than 25,000 from 2000 to 2016. Even after adjusting for age, the mortality rate for falls roughly doubled over that period. Of every 100,000 people age 75 and older, 122 will die from a fall. Falls not only [...]
In recent weeks, I’ve had no fewer than a half-dozen conversations with friends about a difficult—and often embarrassing--issue. No, it isn’t sexual dysfunction, incontinence, or money problems. It is hearing loss. One of every three Americans aged 64-75 has lost some hearing. Half of those 75 and older have trouble hearing. The longer we live, the more we are going [...]
Increasingly, older Americans are likely to die at home, and not in a hospital. And more seniors are using hospice care as they near end of life. However, stubbornly large numbers of Medicare beneficiaries still land in intensive care units or find themselves shuttled from home to hospital and back again in their last months of life. A fascinating and [...]
Dying is trendy. I got an email the other morning about “celebrity deaths.” After the recent demise of David Bowie, Glenn Frey, and “Grizzly Adams,” it seems that everyone is doing it—dying, that is. Apparently, people have been live tweeting the deaths of loved ones at least since 2013. Rock star docs such as Atul Gawande have created their own [...]
Falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among people 65 and older. One-third of older adults will fall, many will be hospitalized, and some will die. You’ve probably heard the common story: A frail senior is doing relatively well until she falls. She breaks a hip, everything seems to go downhill, and she dies. But many falls are preventable. [...]
Almost one of every five patients in the intensive care units of a major teaching hospital got treatment that was futile or “probably” futile, according to the doctors who treated them. And older patients—especially those admitted from a nursing facility—were most likely to get care that does nothing to improve their quality of life, or even keep them alive for [...]