The elderly patient: a special case

The elderly population represents an increasing part of the population, as life expectancy lengthens. As a consequence, rheumatic diseases, especially osteoarthritis, which is highly correlated with age, is increasingly prevalent. NSAIDs, the basic treatment of rheumatic diseases, are thus more and more widely prescribed to elderly patients. These patients must be regarded as a special population because of physiologic changes in absorption, distribution and excretion of drugs due to concomitant treatments of diseases (frequent in the elderly) which may alter metabolism. Specific studies have to be conducted in elderly patients in order to improve the evaluation of the benefit/risk ratio of drugs widely prescribed for this population. This explains why this symposium is devoted to NSAIDs and elderly.