How can a geriatrician help me?
There are many reasons that an older person would seek out the care of a geriatrician. Let me give you an example. Geriatricians have the specific knowledge of what medications should not be taken by older people. There are about sixty medicines which young people could take without a problem but are dangerous in older individuals. I'll give you an example. Most over the counter medicines contain the active ingredient in Benadryl, diphenhydramine. This can be very detrimental to an older person, make them so drowsy and so dizzy that they'll fall and perhaps even break a hip the next day. So, diphenhydramine and these strong antihistamines should not be taken by older people. But the average doctor may not know that information. So a geriatrician has that knowledge base in what medicines should and should not be given to older people. Secondly, they know which medicines interact and don't do well in an older patient. They also know the dosing for older individuals which is different many times than the dosing for younger people. Also, geriatricians focus on the issue of function. Internists often focus on; you have a disease, let's treat the disease and cure it and make you better. Many diseases of aging are not amenable to cures. Arthritis, dementia, incontinence; these are things which you have to make people function better with. They're not going to be cured right now. But we need to help people to function better with these conditions. So, geriatricians focus on function, on rehabilitation. That's a very different focus. The next very important area is that we also are concerned about specific geriatric issues. When our patients come to our clinic, they get a geriatric depression test. Now when you see your internist, they often don't look into depression but geriatricians do because depression is a common problem as you get older. They look at cognitive or mental function. A lot of, again, internists don't look at this. We as geriatricians are concerned. Is this the first stages of Alzheimer's disease? Do people have what we call mild cognitive impairment? Do you have Parkinson's disease? Do you have early Parkinson's disease? These are important issues because the earlier we treat, the higher the success with it. The third area is issues like balance. As you get older, your balance is impaired. So, we want to see how is your balance, what we can do to help you with your balance. So once again, to summarize everything, geriatricians have that specific knowledge base about older patients, to help them function at the maximum, possible level.
