Background: The older population is very heterogeneous with regard to the co-morbidity and the physical reserve. This can result in unacceptably high postoperative complications rates. Th erefore, the aim of the study was to review the literature regarding the outcomes of older patients treated for pancreatic cancer, including the usage of minimal invasive techniques.
Methodology: A review of the literature was carried out including studies on pancreatic cancer in older patients published between 2011 and 2016.
Results: Seventeen retrospective studies were included. The total number of patients was 9981 with the age range of 65 years and more. Studies on surgical treatment alone (1.4%), neoadjuvant/adjuvant treatment with or without surgery (89.4%) and palliative therapy (9.2%) were assessed separately. Appropriate comparison was diffi cult due to the retrospective character and heterogeneity of the study population. Mortality was low, yet there was a great diff erence in morbidity ranging from some percent to even 100% of the study population. Long-term results were poor.
Conclusions: The functional status, not the chronological age alone, is the factor limiting therapeutic options in older patients with pancreatic cancer.
This paper brings up the issue of population aging and its influence on designing and construction of buildings in Poland. It also touches the problem of adaptation of existing facilities to the needs of the elderly and the disabled. Moreover, current trends in Polish demographics and possible outlook for the next 45 years has been presented. The author presents the current legal state concerning rules and regulations on the aspects of adjusting the buildings and their parts to the needs of the disabled. Additionally, the dimensions and the areas of movement for the disabled as well as the primary functional and requirements for bathrooms have been described. In the next paragraph, a concept of Ambient Assisted Living with examples of sanitary equipment for use in residential buildings has been propose.
Dr. Zofia Szweda-Lewandowska of the Warsaw School of Economics discusses the situation of the elderly and their caregivers in Poland.
A i m: The main purpose of this article is to present the main assumptions of the FRAILTOOLS project and the characteristics of the recruitment process in the Polish part of the study.
M a t e r i a l a n d M e t h o d s: The FRAILTOOLS project is a prospective observational study conducted in 5 European countries. The study included people aged 75 and older. Each participating center was required to recruit 388 patients, which corresponded to 97 subjects in each clinical setting by center. Recruitment took place in clinical settings (hospital geriatric acute care, geriatric outpatient clinic, primary health care) and in social conditions (nursing homes). The frailty syndrome was assessed among study participants using 7 different scales. The follow-up period was 18 months.
R e s u l t s: In Poland, 268 elderly subjects took part in the study, which constituted 69.1% of planned recruitment. The majority of participants were acute care patients (108 participants). A high percentage of people successfully recruited for the study was seen in nursing homes (83.5% of predicted number). The lowest recruitment came from primary healthcare (53 participants) and geriatric outpatient clinic (26). About a quarter of recruited participants were lost during follow-up period. The poorest results of control visits were observed among patients from geriatric wards and geriatric outpatient clinic.
C o n c l u s i o n s: The recruitment process for older people in Poland was satisfactory, mainly in hospitalized and institutionalized patients. The worst enrollment result was observed among outpatients. A detailed analysis of enrollment problems among the older Polish population is necessary to determine the optimal recruitment strategy and retain eligible study participants.
A questionnaire survey was conducted in the residential quarters of Guangzhou, for which 582 elderly people over 60 years old were randomly recruited. The hearing impairment of the participants was evaluated using the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly (HHIE), The participants’ subjective responses to the acoustical environment of their living place and the impact of the living acoustical environment (LAE) on the participants were investigated. The results show that the participants with a low HHIE score and no hearing impairment evaluated their LAE more favourably, and they considered that the effect of the LAE on their daily life was weak. However, those with a high HHIE score and severe hearing impairment evaluated their LAE poorly, and considered its effect on their daily lives to be significant. For the elderly, the worse the hearing is, the higher their demand for a better LAE. Traffic, construction, residential quarters, and noise from next door or upstairs neighbours were the main noise sources in the elderly’s living places, and traffic noise, construction noise, and noise from next door and upstairs were the most influential sources. 28.9% of the respondents had trouble hearing what their family said in their living place. The elderly without hearing impairment considered that continuous noise was the main reason that they could not hear what their family said in their living place, while those with hearing impairment believed that their own hearing problem was a contributing factor.
Providing informal care to adults, especially elderly people, may affect many aspects of caregivers’ life, such as: physical and mental health, financial situation, social contacts, etc. Supporting dependent seniors is associated to a higher level of stress, burden and depression as well as higher mortality. The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between caregiving for adults and the subjective quality of life among Poles aged 50–69. We took into account not only the fact of providing care to adult people, but also its beginning, continuation and ending between waves. We assumed that subjective quality of life may be expressed by two variables: one describing life satisfaction, and the second one – loneliness. We used the panel subsample from the Generation and Gender Surveys (GGS) carried out in Poland in 2010/2011 and in 2014. We found a negative effect of stopping caregiving between waves on wellbeing of women-carers, which may be related to the loss of a close person. Moreover, providing care for a longer period of time increases loneliness, which confirms that providing support to others may lead to isolation and smaller social networks.
This article is devoted to the subject of age and the elderly in the Middle Ages, and the manner of viewing elderly people in those times. The author uses Jan Długosz’s Annals, books 9–12, as his basic source. His analysis concentrates on the following questions: Whom did the Polish historian consider worthy of remembrance in his Annals? How did he describe those figures? What words did he use to describe the phenomenon of age or aging? The author analyses the Latin terms used to describe specific older persons, and also presents the perceptions of older women, older men, and elderly people as a group. An attempt is made to answer the question of whether old age was a period of well-being and prosperity in medieval times.