Using Clinical Guidelines Designed for Older Adults With Diabetes Mellitus and Complex Health Status

Increasingly, adults are living to an advanced age. While many enjoy good health, nearly 50% of adults older than 65 years have 3 or more chronic medical conditions. Furthermore, within any age-sex cohort, older adults exhibit widely heterogeneous health status—ranging from robust to frail. This het...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association 2006-04, Vol.295 (16), p.1935-1940
Main Author: Durso, Samuel C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aged
Biological and medical sciences
Blood pressure
Cholesterol
Comorbidity
Decision making
Diabetes
Diabetes Mellitus - epidemiology
Diabetes Mellitus - therapy
Diabetes. Impaired glucose tolerance
Education
Endocrine pancreas. Apud cells (diseases)
Endocrinopathies
Etiopathogenesis. Screening. Investigations. Target tissue resistance
Female
General aspects
Geriatric Assessment
Health care
Humans
Medical sciences
Patient-Centered Care
Patients
Practice Guidelines as Topic
Preventive medicine
Risk
Status
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Increasingly, adults are living to an advanced age. While many enjoy good health, nearly 50% of adults older than 65 years have 3 or more chronic medical conditions. Furthermore, within any age-sex cohort, older adults exhibit widely heterogeneous health status—ranging from robust to frail. This heterogeneity and individual medical complexity makes care for older patients particularly challenging and requires both careful medical judgment and a clear understanding of the patient's personal values and goals. Most current health care guidelines are disease-specific and do not address this complexity and heterogeneity, thus limiting their utility for guiding physicians in the care of older adult patients. The “Guidelines for Improving the Care of Older Persons With Diabetes Mellitus” are the first guidelines to specifically address this complexity and provide guidance to physicians who must prioritize therapies and goals for older adults with diabetes, comorbid medical conditions, and geriatric syndromes. By providing a rationale for prioritizing recommendations and the inclusion of geriatric syndromes that impact the patient's overall health and diabetic care, these guidelines may serve as a model for the development of other guidelines targeting older adults with complex health status.
ISSN:0098-7484
1538-3598
DOI:10.1001/jama.295.16.1935