[Characteristics of palliative care in the elderly]. / Besonderheiten der Palliative Care beim älteren Menschen.

INTRODUCTION: Palliative care for elderly, mostly multimorbid people is an integrative concept that is included at an early stage of illness in addition to curative and rehabilitative treatments. Goals of treatment and in the rest of life are regularly discussed during the course in order to set individual priorities and to plan or question clarifications, treatments and nursing measures. The prognosis, the patient's wishes and values, the possible benefits and burdens of an intervention play a central role in the decision-making process. Advance care planning makes it easier to make decisions at a later stage, especially in the case of dementia, which increasingly impairs the ability to make judgments. Older people suffer not only from destressing symptoms such as pain, but also from functional limitations that affect their quality of life. In addition to symptom-alleviating interventions, rehabilitative measures are also part of the palliative concept. In pain treatment, age-adapted adjustments to the medication are to be considered and the multidimensionality of the pain experience must be taken into account. In the case of cognitive impairment, appropriate observation tools help to identify possible pain. In the context of dementia, palliative treatment of neuropsychiatric symptoms should be considered if the patient suffers from them.

[Palliative care and geriatrics - similarities and opposites]. / Palliative Care und Geriatrie - was ist gemeinsam, was nicht?

Palliative care and geriatrics share many ideas and concepts: both intend to imporve quality of life, both focus on more than the physical domain, and both work in a multiprofessional team. More and more the elderly person attracts notice by palliative care. In multimorbid geriatric patients intentions to cure and to care go alongside sometimes over years in a fragile equilibrium and with uncertain prognosis. Therefore principals of palliative care and geriatrics meet at its best in these patients: improving function plays a major role in any symptom management; how to deal with cognitively impaired patients can be learned from geriatrics; various approaches from curative, palliative and rehabilitative often go hand in hand; decision making is a permanent and sophisticated task in all patients due to prognosis and multimorbidity.

[Palliative care - difficult decisions at the end of life]. / Palliative Care - schwierige Entscheidungen am Lebensende.

Palliative care comprises the complete treatment and care of patients suffering from incurable, life-threatening or chronically progressive disease. The aim is to provide the patients with the best possible quality of life and support them through the course of their illness until their death, to alleviate their suffering as much as possible and in consideration of the social, spiritual and religious aspects according to the patient's wishes. Palliative care is most important when the dying process and the patient's impending death do seem to be inevitable. Shared decision-making at an early stage of illness is mandatory. Respect for a person's dignity means focusing on their autonomy, their personal preferences and their right to live according to their own values and convictions. A person's autonomy is based on the level of information that he or she is given, the pertinent situation, and the patient's readiness and ability to take responsibility for their own life and end-of-life decisions. Decisions about life-prolonging measures, treatment of pain, dyspnea and palliative sedation require balancing the burden against the benefits. Decision-making must rest with the patient - as far as possible and as long as possible. The potential life-shortening effect of palliative therapy will need to be considered and discussed.