Saba Sohail.
Ageing – the independent risk indicator.
J Coll Physicians Surg Pak Jan ;14(5):261.

The graying of hair at temporal region (from tempes=time) is a harbinger of more than the chronological passage of time. It also announces the anticipation of greater health care and social needs. Majority of these health care situations are expected as part of degeneration processes such as the osteoarticular degeneration leading to joint diseases and hearing disturbances; the atherosclerotic intimal degeneration leading to hypertension, ischemic cardiac diseases and cerebrovascular accidents (stroke); the lenticular degeneration leading to cataract and related visual impairments; Alzheimer`s disease, and so on and so forth. However, apart from these chronic and expected geriatric complications, advancing age is increasingly being recognized as an independent predictor of high risk situations for example postoperative atrial fibrillation following cardiac interventions, non union of fractures which are so common in the osteoporotic bones of the elderly, and a myriad of evidence based therapies, which are primarily intended to rectify the degenerative complications of the elderly. This is an Editorial.

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