[Occupational medicine aspects of the health needs of elderly workers]

The industrial-medical dispensatory care as an important field of the prophylactic health protection of the population of the GDR ensures the total covering of the working people in youth and in pre-pension age. Between these periods of life there is a special dispensatory care for those workers for whom defined exposures, strains and standards exist at their workplaces. Results of about 500,000 industrial-medical check-ups of the year 1985, occupational diseases, their incidence rates and conclusions for the demand for care are reported under special consideration of the working people from the 45th year of life, differentiated between by their sex. The high rates of findings and the considerable percentage of fitness restrictions in working people from the 45th year of life prevailingly caused by chronic diseases of the locomotor system, cardiovascular diseases, defective vision, defective hearing and by chronic bronchitis necessitate a further improvement of the quality and efficiency of medical care, which is desired by the revised edition of the Methodology of Industrial-Medical Fitness Examinations and Check-Ups from 1987. Possibilities and objectives of the consolidation of the medical check-up conceptions for working people beyond 1990 are referred too.