The Illness as the Focus of Geriatric Medicine

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Abstract
The quest to define the disease responsible for a patient's distress is important when the disease is acute or potentially remediable or both. Almost by definition, this search is not a dominant issue in the management of many chronic conditions, such as heart failure or chronic arthritides. Nonetheless, the clinical algorithm that mandates the initial "ruling out" of the remediable disease permeates clinical teaching and practice. How critical is it to determine precisely the nature of the underlying disease when one is helping an elderly person cope with illness? Three arguments that favor such precise determination are particularly compelling: the . . .