OBJECTIVE To review the concept, components, and characteristics of the Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment technique. DATA SOURCES Medline and non-Medline literature search. STUDY SELECTION The following key words were used: Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment; all available years of study were reviewed. DATA EXTRACTION Studies that assessed the Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment technique...

CANADIAN GERIATRICS JOURNAL, VOLUME 18, ISSUE 1, MARCH 2015 Welcome to the first issue of the Canadian Geriatrics Journal for 2015! In this issue we explore an eclectic range of topics related to both geriatrics and gerontology. Dr. Cosco comments on the overlapping/opposing paradigms of successful aging and frailty, while Dr. Marshall et al. examines the use (and underuse) of a comprehensive g...

Observations are drawn from field experience to explicate the role of the medical sociologist within geriatric clinical practice—a case presentation of a sociology "with" medicine. A sociology "with" medicine is presented as promoting the institutionalization of medical sociology as a special field within, yet independent of, medicine. The aim is to promote initiatives which generate and lest s...

OBJECTIVE The authors compared the clinical treatment given older psychiatric inpatients on a geriatric psychiatry unit and a general psychiatry unit. METHOD The charts of 50 randomly selected general psychiatry inpatients over the age of 65 years and 50 inpatients from the geriatric psychiatry unit who were matched for age, gender, and primary diagnosis were reviewed. RESULTS Significantly...

The rapid ageing of the European population poses a challenge for healthcare systems. The incidence of cancers will rise as the number of adults aged 65 years and older increases. Moreover, the health status of individuals in this age group is diverse, and thus requires modern oncology to apply an individualised approach to treatment. There is a clear need to develop and validate health assessm...

Objective: Comparison of the first-generation Minimum Geriatric Screening Tools (MGST) and the third-generation interRAI Acute Care (interRAI AC). Design: Based on a qualitative multiphase exchange of expert opinion, published evidence was critically analyzed and translated into a consensus. Results: Both methods are intended for a multi-domain geriatric assessment in acute hospital settings, b...

OBJECTIVE This article reviews the assessment and management of psychiatric problems among the oldest old. METHOD The author reviewed the English-language literature pertinent to the characteristics of people 85 years old or older and the assessment and management of psychiatric disorders in this age group with a special focus on depression in the oldest old. RESULTS Much of the current lit...

BACKGROUND Comprehensive geriatric assessment has been shown to improve patient outcomes, but the geriatricians who deliver it are in short-supply. A web-based method of comprehensive geriatric assessment has been developed with the potential to improve access to specialist geriatric expertise. The current study aims to test the reliability and safety of comprehensive geriatric assessment perfo...

BACKGROUND Geriatric syndromes are rarely detected in family medicine. Within the AGE program (active geriatric evaluation), a brief assessment tool (BAT) designed for family physicians (FP) was developed and its diagnostic performance estimated by comparison to a comprehensive geriatric assessment. METHODS This prospective diagnostic study was conducted in four primary care sites in Switzerl...