Geriatric Medicines – A Brief Introduction and Some Common Conditions
If your ginger tea does not help resolve your cold, you go to the general physician; if you encounter skin inflammation, you seek a dermatologist and so on, there are specialized doctors for every kind of illness. But where do you turn to, if you are looking for the best treatment for older people? Well, you look for geriatricians. It is not known among many people, that there is a different specialist for treatment and care for older people, known as geriatric medicines.
Let’s take a look at its introduction followed by some common conditions of old age.
What are Geriatric Medicines?
As mentioned in brief, a while ago, geriatric medicine is a specialization for older people. It aims to promote their health, prevent diseases, manage disabilities and offer quality care for them. This includes people older than the age of 60. However, it can be available even before that, in case the patient or the family feels the need.
Often it is prescribed by a doctor under whom currently the treatment is going on. It is done as often the normal treatment does not yield adequate progress on older patients as they have much slower recovery and their multiple health conditions complicate the recovery.
Now let’s have a look at some of the most common conditions faced by older people.
Sensory Impairment
Having impairment in old age is quite common, particularly for hearing and vision. Most older people have either one or both of them. But thankfully it can be treated effectively with correction glasses and hearing aids.
Urine Incontinence
It is probably the most common and more embarrassing problem faced by older people. Urine inconsistency has defined as the inability to control the urination and have frequent urination. As a result, people might leak urine before reaching the bathroom. It cannot be cured effectively as older age leads to muscle inflexibility that controls the urine flow, but it might be managed well with certain medical help and adult diapers.
Oral Health
Oral health is a common issue among people of any age, including older people. They gradually begin to lose natural teeth, apart from having a range of oral problems like bad breath, dry mouth, cavities, tooth decay and so on, overall it posses much difficulty to chew food properly. The good news is, they can be effectively managed with timely medicines and prosthetic teeth if needed.
Cognitive Health
Cognitive health refers to the ability of people to think, evaluate, remember and learn anything. With older age, people lose their cognitive ability. In fact, most of the older individual eventually loses cognitive functions. This affects their overall health in many ways. Its treatment is somewhat more challenging than the others as mentioned before.
These are some of the most common diseases faced by older people. Getting in touch with a geriatrician will help to manage more of the conditions effectively. However, apart from extensive treatment, cooperation from family and friends is also very crucial for their overall health and wellbeing.
Why Every Elder Patient Need Geriatrics Medicine
An individual goes through several stages of age. In each of them, they require special care and medication. In the usual environment around us, we have comprehended few of them, while neglected other few. For instance, we have fathomed the special need of an individual during its initial years of life and classified as paediatrics domain. However, once they outgrow adolescence, the domain of doctors is classified based on either medical illness.
Thus, this attitude of the society overall, make the geriatrics domain a rather unusual and unheard specialty of medical care. Let’s understand the importance of geriatric medicine.
Geriatrics is a specialty of medical healthcare that involves diagnosis, treatment, and care, particularly for elderly people. It promotes their overall health by treating disabilities and diseases through both corrective and preventive measures. A doctor with specialization in geriatric medicine is known as geriatrician or geriatric physician.
As mentioned above, as soon as an individual is pronounced an adult, they don’t need to consult a paediatrician any longer. In event of any illness, at first a general physician is consulted, upon further diagnosis, they are recommended to doctors having specialization in that particular illness. For eg. Gynaecologist, a gastroenterologist, a dermatologist and so on.
This treatment structure is considered as the standard procedure and rules out any particular need of specialist for elderly patients. This common misconception is prevalent among people, which stop them from seeking geriatric care for elderly patients. However, the need of having a geriatric physician is extremely important particularly for super senior citizens.
Geriatric medicine aims to improve the physical, emotional and mental wellbeing of the elder patient. Its focuses to prevent, to improve and/or to eradicate, conditions that degrade the quality of life. Some of its main goals are to-
- Improve instability
- Improve immobility
- Improve memory, recognition, and intellect
- Improve incontinence
A rather large proportion of super senior citizens often display symptoms of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, which make them vulnerable, similar to kids, who are not always sure about their exact symptoms or forget to mention them or to recollect. Moreover, due to old age, the healing and regenerative properties diminish significantly. Thereby, their treatment and recovery are different from that of an individual in their mid-30s or 40s. Thus the need geriatric physician is irreplaceable and should be acknowledged adequately.