Cardiovascular disease and cancer in very old age

doi:10.1136/bmj.a2521

Published 10 December 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2521
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2521

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Cardiovascular disease and cancer in very old age

Risk seems to plateau, but other causes of death are poorlydefined

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Death in young or middle aged people usually has a single, welldefined cause, whereas cause of death in older people is oftenpoorly defined. The multifaceted nature of the association betweendeath and disability is gradually being realised.¹ An olderperson may have a sudden cardiac death or succumb to rapidlyadvancing cancer, but a more common scenario is a fluctuatingworsening of health towards death—for example, becauseof heart failure. Another pattern—gradual loss of lifeforce—is seen especially in frail, institutionalised patients.

In the linked study, Driver and colleagues (doi:10.1136/bmj.a2467)analysed the effect of increasing age on the most importantcauses of death in developed societies: cardiovascular diseasesand cancer.² The study assesses the interaction between ageand the main causes of death in 22 048 male doctors aged 40-84in the United States. The most intriguing results are thosein men aged 80-90, in whom . . . [Full text of this article]

Timo E Strandberg, professor of geriatrics

¹ Department of Health Sciences/Geriatrics, University of Oulu, and Unit of General Practice, Oulu University Hospital, FIN-90014 Oulu, Finland

timo.strandberg@oulu.fi

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Incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer in advanced age: prospective cohort study: Jane A Driver, Luc Djoussé, Giancarlo Logroscino, J Michael Gaziano, and Tobias Kurth
BMJ 2008 337: a2467. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]