Geriatrics is a medical discipline that studies diseases occurring in the elderly and their disabling consequences with the goal of delaying functional and mental decline while maintaining self-sufficiency and the best quality of life.
Gerontology is a branch of geriatrics that seeks to identify the biological mechanisms of aging and senescence.
Geriatrics is closely related to internal medicine and therefore does not need diagnostic equipment other than this. What is important is the different approach by the physician to the geriatric patient. First of all, the geriatric patient often has multiple diseases, with symptoms overlapping with each other, so collecting the medical history can often be difficult. Frequent mental confusion is another aspect that sometimes makes it difficult to approach such a patient. Another aspect to consider is the particular “frailty” of the elderly patient, due to both necessarily chronic treatments and the reduction, with advancing age, of the biological systems designed to maintain homeostasis (internal balance).
The most frequent geriatric diseases are:

• Senile dementia
• Alzheimer’s syndrome
• Osteoporosis
• Osteoarthritis resulting in difficulty in patient movement;
• COPD
• Diabetes mellitus type 2 (with related visual disorders)
• Stipsi