The health-care in the extreme longevity

The increase in life expectancy, the decrease of birth rate, and of the death rate in advanced ages caused, particularly in the industrialized countries, a progressive demographic transformation of the society, characterized by an increased proportion of the elderly. We assist an inevitable increase of morbidity and disability, not only due to the global aging of the population. but mainly to the increase of the age class above 80 years. For this reason, it is necessary to create and/or effort, especially in the Western countries, an adequate health-caring network. This should integrate and interact between the hospitals and the territories, offering all sanitary services (e.g., assisted sanitary residences, day hospitals (DHs), hospices, Alzheimer centers, diurnal centers, integrated domiciliary care (IDC), general practitioners), required by the elderly, and particularly by the oldest old people. All this should be maintained by an adequate financial support of the social-economic sources, which are necessary not only to activate the health-care services, but also to favor the economic and fiscal stimulation toward the families maintaining the elderly patients. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.