Age-related diseases demand attention

Certain disorders are more common in older age, but their destructive course is not necessarily inevitable.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Oct. 11, 2004.

Washington -- Some lesser-known diseases that strike older adults could, in the near future, spring from the shadows of more familiar illnesses like cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's disease to catch the unwary physician by surprise, warned clinicians and researchers speaking at a Sept. 21 congressional briefing.

They identified these conditions as:

• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, currently in fourth place among the leading causes of death in the United States and poised to move into third place as the population ages.
• Urinary incontinence, while not caused by aging, still manages to affect millions of older people who structure their lives around the availability of a bathroom.
• Age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the nation, which is stealing the independence of many elderly people by making it impossible for them to read, drive or write a check.

"We need to train physicians and other health care providers to recognize these diseases and not to dismiss them by saying, 'Sorry, you're 85 years old, what do you expect anyway?' " said Daniel Perry, executive director of the Alliance for Aging Research, which sponsored the briefing.

Even as the prevalence rates of many diseases that cause death and disability are declining, rates of COPD are increasing, said William Bailey, MD, director of the Lung Health Center at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.