scholarly journals CLINICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF POSTOPERATIVE ANALGESIA IN ELDERLY AND OLD PATIENTS

Author(s):  
V.O. Telegan ◽  
D.A. Shkurupiy

Nearly 13% of the elderly and old population experience psychosomatic pain that is not regarded as a response to irritants. Diagnosis and treatment of the postoperative pain in old and elderly patients may be complicated by chronic pain or somatic diseases. The aim of this work was to study clinical characteristics of the postoperative pain in old and elderly patients. Materials and methods. This study based on analysis of 99 cases of the perioperative period. Patients were divided into groups by age: the 1st group included individuals aged 18-59 years, the 2nd group included individuals over 60 years. The influence of age, type of anesthesia and postoperative analgesia on the character and severity of pain was determined by questioning and clinical comparison. The Visual Analogue Scale and the McGill questionnaire were used to assess the pain intensity. Results and their discussion: the elderly patients demonstrated higher scores of the affective component to surgical intervention; moreover, the direct relationship between the affective and evaluative components and the indirect correlation of the sensitive component of pain with age was found out. There have been established the significant direct links between postoperative pain and its components in elderly people with the level of pain before surgery, intrathecal anaesthesia, and vascular surgery. Conclusions: in the elderly, in contrast to the younger individuals, the level of postoperative pain is more pronounced. The initial level of pre-operative pain in these patients definitely influences the level of postoperative pain. Simultaneously, the postoperative pain in the elderly is due to the greater lability of all the components of pain, with the prevalence of affective and evaluative components. The persistence of pain in the postoperative period is typical for elderly people who underwent vascular interventions and intrathecal anaesthesia. In the context of the conventional tactics of postoperative pain relief in the elderly people, the strength and the characteristics of the pain are more significantly intense relatively to those in younger patients that require an improvement in the tactics of pain management.

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 233
Author(s):  
Piera Federico ◽  
Emilio Francesco Giunta ◽  
Annalisa Pappalardo ◽  
Andrea Tufo ◽  
Gianpaolo Marte ◽  
...  

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the primary tumour of the liver with the greatest incidence, particularly in the elderly. Additionally, improvements in the treatments for chronic liver diseases have increased the number of elderly patients who might be affected by HCC. Little evidence exists regarding HCC in old patients, and the elderly are still underrepresented and undertreated in clinical trials. In fact, this population represents a complex subgroup of patients who are hard to manage, especially due to the presence of multiple comorbidities. Therefore, the choice of treatment is mainly decided by the physician in the clinical practice, who often tend not to treat elderly patients in order to avoid the possibility of adverse events, which may alter their unstable equilibrium. In this context, the clarification of the optimal treatment strategy for elderly patients affected by HCC has become an urgent necessity. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the available data regarding the treatment of HCC in elderly patients, starting from the definition of “elderly” and the geriatric assessment and scales. We explain the possible treatment choices according to the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) scale and their feasibility in the elderly population.


2021 ◽  
pp. 56-57
Author(s):  
Rohit Arora ◽  
D.K Sharma

Hypertension is a common disease in the elderly associated with signicant morbidity and mortality. Due to the complexity of this population, the optimal target of blood pressure (BP) control is still controversial. In this article, we conduct a literature review of trials published in English in the last 10 years which were specically designed to study the efcacy and safety of various BP targets in patients who are 70 years or older. Using these criteria, we found that the benets in the positive studies were demonstrated even with a minimal BPcontrol (systolic BP[SBP] <150 mmHg) and continued to be reported for a SBP<120 mmHg. On the other hand, keeping SBP<140 mmHg seemed to be safely achieved in elderly patients. Although the safety of lowering SBP to <120 mmHg is debated, Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial study has shown no increased risk of falls, fractures, or kidney failure in elderly patients with SBP lower than this threshold. While the recent guidelines recommended to keep BP <130/80 mmHg in the elderly, more individualized approach should be considered to achieve this goal in order to avoid undesirable complications. Furthermore, further studies are required to evaluate BPtarget in very old patients or those with multiple comorbidities.


1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-96
Author(s):  
Margaret C Gibson ◽  
Michael R Thomas ◽  
Andrew J Cook

An appreciation of the context in which gerontological health care occurs is crucial to the successful and ethical collection, interpretation and utilization of data on the pain experiences of elderly people. Important contextual considerations for researchers and clinicians who are addressing pain in the elderly are identified. It is argued that topics that are the focus of current attention in the field of pain and ageing, such as the effect of dementia on memory for pain and the responsiveness of the elderly to psychosocial pain treatment, would be clarified by an understanding of the broader sociopolitical context in which ageing occurs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 175883592092343 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZhiYu Duan ◽  
GuangYan Cai ◽  
JiJun Li ◽  
XiangMei Chen

Despite available prevention and treatment measures, such as hydration, diuresis, magnesium supplementation, and amifostine, renal toxicity is still one of the major dose-limiting side effects of cisplatin. The aim of this review is to discuss the issue of cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity in the elderly. Compared with young patients, the incidences of cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity and acute kidney injury (AKI) in elderly patients are significantly increased, and survival time may be decreased. Following cisplatin treatment of elderly patients, tubulointerstitial injuries will be significantly aggravated based on their original age, both for acute injuries due to cell necrosis and exfoliation and chronic injuries due to interstitial fibrosis, tubular atrophy, and dilatation. The high incidence of cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity in elderly patients may be associated with renal hypoperfusion; increased comorbidities, such as chronic kidney disease (CKD), cardiovascular disease, and diabetes mellitus; increased use of combined drugs [especially non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blockers (ACEI/ARB), and antibiotics]; decreased clearance of cisplatin; and high plasma ultrafilterable cisplatin. Considering hemodynamic stability and water balance, short duration and low volume hydration may be more suitable for treating elderly people. With the increasing popularity of low-dose daily/weekly regimens, we do not recommend routine diuretic treatment for elderly patients. We recommend using a less nephrotoxic platinum if large doses of cisplatin (100mg/m2) are needed.


Author(s):  
Lina K. Massoud ◽  
Hala Z. AlAgha ◽  
Mahmoud H. Taleb

Inappropriate prescribing (IP) is a major healthcare problem in elderly patients. The risk of this problem increases during hospitalization. This is due to increase morbidity and thus increases the use of medications by the inpatients. This study will clarify the problem of IP for elderly people during hospitalization and will identify the different types of it. It also will highlight some tools that are used to assess the different types of IP and the prevalence of it in elderly patients during hospitalization. Finally, the study will address the consequences of IP in the elderly inpatients and the risks associated with the use of some potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) in the elderly. 


Pain medicine ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 42-49
Author(s):  
Anastasiia Romanenko ◽  
Юрій Кучин ◽  
Катерина Бєлка ◽  
Ігор Токар

The purpose of this article is to compare different methods of analgesia during perioperative period in elderly patients with а proximal femoral fracture. The incidence of hip fracture is high and also rises with the age, for example, In Great Britain, number of patients with a hip fracture will be approximately 100 000 in 2033, and it’s also associated with significant healthcare financing. Nevertheless, effective pain management is a big challenge for clinicians because of considerable problems in geriatric patients, including age, physiological changes in the elderly, preexisting comorbidities, cognitive impairment, high risk of delirium, problems with rehabilitation and probability of an independent life [12].   Opioids are still the main option for hip fracture pain management, despite differences in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in elderly patients, which are correlated with high frequency of side effects. Opioid-related adverse drug events are associated with worse patient outcomes such as morbidity, mortality and length of stay increase. Therefore, peripheral nerve blocks as part of multimodal analgesic technique can provide more effective pain control after hip fracture. Comprehensive literature searches focus on the use of peripheral nerves blocks as preoperative analgesia, as postoperative analgesia or as a supplement to general anesthesia for hip fracture surgery.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chonji Fukumoto ◽  
Shouhei Ogisawa ◽  
Masashi Tani ◽  
Toshiki Hyodo ◽  
Ryouta Kamimura ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The status of oral cancer therapy in elderly patients in Japan, where ageing is rapidly progressing, may serve as a model for other countries with similar demographics. There is controversy over what kind of treatment should be applied and how aggressively it should be applied to very elderly patients who have exceeded the average life expectancy. Given that 85 years is approximately the overall Japanese life expectancy at birth, we considered a threshold of 85 years and hypothesized that the prognosis of oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) patients aged ≥85 years was not inferior to that of those < 85 years. The aim of the present study was to investigate the clinical characteristics, treatment methods, and prognoses of Japanese oral SCC patients aged ≥85 years. Methods A retrospective cohort study was performed. The data of patients with primary oral SCC (n = 358) from 2005 to 2018 in our institute were extracted from electronic medical records. A total of 358 patients with oral SCC were divided into two groups (≥85 years group [n = 26] and < 85 years group [n = 332]) based on the age threshold of 85 years at the first visit. Kaplan-Meier survival analyses and Cox proportional hazard models were used to analyse overall survival (OS) and hazard ratios (HRs) according to age group, treatment, and TNM classification. Results There was no difference in the 5-year OS rate between the ≥85 years and < 85 years groups (80.8% vs. 82.2%, P = 0.359). This finding was the same in the operative (94.7% vs. 85.8%, P = 0.556) and non-operative (42.9% vs. 33.2%, P = 0.762) groups, indicating that age did not affect prognosis. Mortality was lower in the operative group than in the non-operative group (adjusted HR: 0.276, 95% CI: 0.156–0.489, P < 0.001), suggesting that surgery is a superior method. However, non-surgical treatment was selected at a higher rate in the ≥85 years group (26.9% vs. 11.1%, P = 0.028). Conclusions This study suggests the prognosis of ≥85-year-old patients was not inferior to that of < 85-year-old patients. We recommend that surgery as the first choice treatment for ≥85-year-old patients with oral SCC who can tolerate surgery should be performed.


Author(s):  
Maria do Céu Mendes Pinto Marques ◽  
Francisca Tereza Galiza ◽  
Maria Célia Freitas ◽  
Maria Vilani Cavalcante Guedes

Evaluating the culture of drug safety, of certain services, and specific subjects, especially for the elderly population, makes it possible to identify gaps in clinical nursing care. The study aimed to analyze the social representations of nurses regarding the culture of drug safety in clinical care for the elderly people. This is a descriptive and exploratory research of qualitative nature, having the theoretical support of social representations. The chapter samples 38 nurses via interview and a non-participant observation. Analysis is done using Alceste software. This resulted in seven stable classes, and Class 3 had the largest representation, 23% of the corpus. Class 3 maintained hierarchical and semantic proximity to Class 2, which deals with technologies to ensure the safety of elderly patients in the use of medicines. For nurses, technologies help in the safety of elderly patients, but do not guarantee the extinction of adverse events. The chapter considered the need for patient safety to become an organizational culture favoring the quality of clinical nursing care in the handling of medicines.


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