IRELAND: Healthy Old Age 'Not Impossible'

DUBLIN (IrishHealth.Com), November 11, 2005: A leading expert on elderly medicine has said that despite increased life expectancy, the burden of chronic ill-health in older people is actually falling. Prof Raymond Tallis of Hope Hospital in Salford in England told a meeting in Dublin today that some surprising data on hospital admission in older people in the UK and Europe has shown that older people do not spend a longer period in hospital in the decade or so before death compared to people dying younger. He said one study on stroke had shown that instead of an expected increased incidence of this condition of nearly 30% due to ageing, there has actually been a fall of 28%. "These observations mean that we have to revise our expectations of future burdens of need and illness," Prof Tallis told the Millin Meeting at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. He said advances in medicine had allowed for the postponement of disabling illness when people get older. By delaying the onset of disabling diseases to later ages, the average duration of disability in old age before death has been shortened. Prof Tallis said more people are now having strokes in advanced old age, where survival is greatly reduced, as opposed to having strokes in earlier old age, when the patient more frequently survives but is often chronically ill. He told the meeting there is still huge untapped potential for postponing disability in old age in areas such as health promotion, illness prevention, the appropriate use of existing therapies and the feasibility of future technologies. Prof Tallis outlined possible future scenarios, including the ‘nightmare’ scenario in which the age of onset of chronic disease changes little but death is postponed by many years. Other scenarios would be that the onset of chronic illness and death are postponed to the same amount or where the onset of chronic disabling disease is postponed much more than death, which is the most likely scenario. Prof Tallis said a healthy old age is neither impossible not a contradiction in terms. By Niall Hunter Editor