You only notice them if you understand them: Geriatric syndromes.

Ageing is acknowledged to result from a lifelong accumulation of molecular and cellular damage, caused by many mechanisms that are regulated by a complex maintenance and repair network. Multimorbidity and polypharmacy are the results of our good standard of care for ageing persons as present in many Western societies. Many healthcare expenses and efforts are currently devoted to providing healthcare to older persons. As the diversity among ageing persons is enormous and as the exact age of a person is easy to retrieve, higher age often lets clinicians make (wrong) judgments solely based on chronological age. Clinicians and researchers as well, therefore, need simple, easy to administer, valid, accurate, and reliable methods to detect the biological age of an older person, often referred to as his state of vulnerability or more preferred, frailty. As a problematic expression of ageing, age-related decline occurs in many physiological systems, which collectively results in vulnerability to sudden health status changes triggered by minor stressor events. This situation is often referred to as frailty.