Depression in geriatri c

BACKGROUND: Massage and touch-based treatment are popular despite limited evidence from high quality clinical trials. This article reviews the rationale and evidence of treating older patients with psychiatric symptoms by touch-based therapy. METHODS: Narrative literature review, based on Medline search with the following key words: massage, social touch, affective touch, clinical trial, meta-analysis. Citations of identified articles were searched for additional relevant studies...

BACKGROUND: The Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) provides essential information about older hospitalized patients but is either not systematically adopted or not adopted at all in clinical routine. As a consequence, critical factors influencing patients' trajectories, like personal resources (geriatric resources, GR), geriatric syndromes (GS), health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and multidimensional prognosis often escape routine diagnostics. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between HRQoL and GR/GS as well as its prognostic signature...

BACKGROUND: The dementia syndrome compromises effective communication and may thus lead to social isolation, psychological distress and decreased quality of life. It is therefore of importance to maintain communication capacity in dementia as long as possible. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A total of 24 professional caregivers from 8 nursing homes were assigned to train 254 of their respective colleagues using the train-the-trainer program MultiTANDEMplus. As in the 6 control nursing homes, severity of dementia, depressive symptoms and communication capacity were assessed in a total of 358 residents at baseline and 21 months later...

Swallowing disorders (or dysphagia) are common in the elderly and their prevalence is often underestimated. They may result in serious complications including dehydration, malnutrition, airway obstruction, aspiration pneumonia (infectious process) or pneumonitis (chemical injury caused by the inhalation of sterile gastric contents). Moreover the repercussions of dysphagia are not only physical but also emotional and social, leading to depression, altered quality of life, and social isolation. While some changes in swallowing may be a natural result of aging, dysphagia in the elderly is mainly due to central nervous system diseases such as stroke, parkinsonism, dementia, medications, local oral and oesophageal factors...

OBJECTIVES: Anorexia is the most frequent modification of eating habits in old age, which may lead to malnutrition and consequent morbidity and mortality in older adults. We aimed to estimate the prevalence and factors associated to anorexia in a sample of Italian older persons living in different settings. Our secondary aim was to evaluate the impact of senile anorexia on nutritional status and on eating habits, as well as on functional status. DESIGN AND SETTING: Observational study in nursing homes, in rehabilitation and acute geriatric wards, and in the community in four Italian regions (Lazio, Sicily, Emilia-Romagna, and Veneto)...