title: [Problems of the so-called geriatric gastrointestinal diseases].
abstract: The significant increase in the number of people older than seventy forces the physician to be acquainted with both psychological and physical alterations induced by aging and to devote an ever increasing proportion of time for recognition and treatment os such alterations. In the medical sense, the biological and physiological age is more important than the chronological age. With increasing age there is--especially concerning the digestive tract and its accessory organs--a rise in the incidence of organic affections and a decline in the frequency of functional disorders. Besides it is wise to know, that the increasing age there is often a coexistence of multiple degenerative disorders and disease states, involving many body systems and organs. On the background of this recognition it is also important to know, that prognosis too varies with age because of the coexistence of individually prognosticated disease states and moreover to realize, that elderly patients do not tolerate invasive and prolonged surgical procedures. Structural or functional disturbances of the digestive organs by aging processes do not cause death per se, but can become one important factor; degenerative sclerotic vascular alterations bear relationship to the poorly contractile vasculature that brings up difficulties in the control of hemorrhagic gastroduodenal ulcers. Many gastrointestinal disorders in elderly patients occur with an equal frequency in younger patients, some are more common in the geriatric population; these include hiatal hernia, carcinoma of esophagus, stomach, pancreas, bile ducts and colon, intestinal obstruction (ileus) by neoplastic growth, gallstone ileus, external hernia and operative adhesions and especially diverticular diseases of the colon and its complications and ischemic colitis by mesenteric vascular occlusion. Cirrhosis of the liver is often diagnosed for the first time in the older age groups while acute viral hepatitis uses to run a cholestatic course and is therefore often misdiagnosed as mechanical obstruction. In general history is difficult to obtain, the response of the organism with temperature and white blood count to stress is often delayed and rigidity associated with an underlying inflammatory disease involving the peritoneum is often delayed and rigidity associated with an underlying inflammatory disease involving the peritoneum is often atypical. Because of this limited reaction to severe stress, early surgical intervention is imperative in the elderly patients.
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D005767:Gastrointestinal Diseases / Q000601:surgery; D006801:Humans
vernacular_title: Zur Problematik der sog. gastrointestinalen Alterskrankheiten