Biography
Biography: Diane Chau
Abstract
Objectives:
- Understand how to define and classify pain in older adults
- List social and environmental factors affecting the perception of pain and its treatment common to older adults
- Recognize the scales available to assess pain
- List medical and non-medical treatments available for pain
Demographics:
- Median successful aging increased
- 65 years represents about 36 million; by 2020 54million
- Fastest growing segment of the population is > 85 years
- Currently 5 million, 20 million by 2050
- 1900’s - 3 million elderly (1 in 25 Americans), by 2020, 54 million (1 in 6 Americans)
- 2011 - first baby boomers reached 65
Mechanism of Pain Based on Pathophysiology:
- Nociceptive pain: Results from stimulation of pain receptors.
- Somatic: damage to body tissue, well localized
- Visceral: from viscera, poorly localized, may have nausea
- Neuropathic pain: Results from dysfunctions or lesions in either the central or peripheral nervous systems.
- Mixed pain syndromes: multiple or unknown mechanisms (e.g. headaches, vasculitic syndromes).
- Psychogenic Pain: somatoform disorders, conversion reactions.
Challenges of Pain Treatment in Geriatrics:
- The healthy to hospice span.
- A healthy retiree is no longer an individual who decreases their lifestyle activities.
- The "baby-boomers" in their 60s and 70s are "baby boomers"; they have a functional active lifestyle.
- The older old 80’s to 90’s are diverse. Functional ability, living situation, social support, restricted finances should be considered.