by Giacinto Libertini

Received: 19 February 2017;  Published: 13 April 2017;  doi: 10.21926/obm.geriatr.1702002

Nowadays, geriatrics is mainly the treatment by palliative methods of the disorders that characterize senile decay. This is perfectly compatible with the prevailing view that aging is the inevitable result of multiple degenerative processes that can only partially be treated as they are in themselves inevitable and irreversible. This interpretation of aging clashes with a mass of data and arguments that, conversely, indicate aging as a specific physiological function, favoured by supra-individual natural selection [...]

by Michael Fossel

Received: 11 December 2016;  Published: 06 January 2017;  doi: 10.21926/obm.geriatr.1701001

Geriatrics, and much of clinical medicine, is on the verge of a profound transformational shift. Until now, there has been a sharp conceptual divide between diseases which can be readily and effectively treated, and diseases which we have thought to be beyond clinical intervention. In the first disease category, are many of the most common infections that respond to antibiotics and immunizations. We have made dramatic changes in the demographics and the mortality of many such treatable diseases. At the other extrem [...]