title: [Palliative care and geriatrics - similarities and opposites].
abstract: Palliative care and geriatrics share many ideas and concepts: both intend to imporve quality of life, both focus on more than the physical domain, and both work in a multiprofessional team. More and more the elderly person attracts notice by palliative care. In multimorbid geriatric patients intentions to cure and to care go alongside sometimes over years in a fragile equilibrium and with uncertain prognosis. Therefore principals of palliative care and geriatrics meet at its best in these patients: improving function plays a major role in any symptom management; how to deal with cognitively impaired patients can be learned from geriatrics; various approaches from curative, palliative and rehabilitative often go hand in hand; decision making is a permanent and sophisticated task in all patients due to prognosis and multimorbidity.
authors.affiliation: Abteilung für Geriatrie und Palliative Care, Spital Affoltern a. Albis. roland.kunz@spitalaffoltern.ch
authors.forename: Roland
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kunz
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy / Q000379:methods; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005853:Geriatrics / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000379:methods* / Q000523:psychology; D057240:Patient Preference; D011379:Prognosis; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology; D012931:Social Environment; D013557:Switzerland