[Intervention: a survey in Switzerland]

Medicine is always in some way an intervention. In old age one can usefully divide the rehabilitation intervention action in the following three groups: 1. The preventive rehabilitation by still healthy elderly persons to prevent the changes of old age. 2. The general rehabilitation by each elderly and ill person to keep the stay in bed as short as possible and to improve the independence of the patient and 3. the purposive rehabilitation by certain illness (hemiplegia) which mostly needs an entire treatening team. The rehabilitation keeps certain rules but it has to be individualised for each patient. Further the predominant principles are quoted, even though incomplet, after which the medical and social arrangements and services are bild on.