The Aging Lung: Clinical and Imaging Findings and the Fringe of Physiological State.
Since aspects of demographic transition have become an essential part of socioeconomic, medical and health-care research in the last decades, it is vital for the radiologist to discriminate between normal ageing related effects and abnormal imaging findings in the elderly. This article reviews functional and structural aspects of the ageing lung and focuses on typical ageing related radiological patterns.


CONCLUSIONS
• The physiological aging process of the thoracic organs shows typical structural and functional aspects.• Mild interstitial fibrosis and focal parenchymal abnormalities like septal thickening can be diagnosed frequently - whereas a clinical correlate is often lacking.• With increasing patient age, the influence by various intrinsic and extrinsic factors (including comorbidities of the patient, and drug inhalation toxicants) also increases.• A growing spectrum of imaging techniques (including functional cardiopulmonary MRI, MRI spectroscopy, hybrid-techniques) is confronted by rare empiric data in the very old people (aging 80 years and older).
Amalie Sieveking Hospital Academic Teaching Hospital of the University of Hamburg, Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology.
T H
TH
Schröder
Department of Radiology, LungenClinic Grosshansdorf.
B
B
Storbeck
Department of Pneumology, Airway Research Center North, Member of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL), LungenClinic Grosshansdorf.
K F
KF
Rabe
Amalie Sieveking Hospital Academic Teaching Hospital of the University of Hamburg, Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology.
C
C
Weber
D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008168:Lung / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008171:Lung Diseases / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*