With the growth in life expectancy and the advent of new therapeutic options, aging patients are a growing group that hospital pharmacists must understand in order to better deal with their specific needs. Recruiting strategies in clinical trials frequently exclude elderly patients who are a relevant target group for the investigated medicines. On the other hand, the use of complex and expensive treatment strategies, like bone marrow transplant in blood cancers, raises ethical and economical concerns when elderly citizens are involved- are age related cut-offs for treatments due to scientific reasons or are biased due to economic pressures? The causes and consequences of these situations must be understood, and hospital pharmacists should be able to have a science based approach to these issues, to better perform their roles in ethics and pharmacy and therapeutic committees, and also to improve their dialogue capabilities with elderly patients.

Teaching Goals:

• explain the specificity of aging patients, with focus on the design and relevance of clinical trials and on therapeutic options
• review incidence of some diseases in aging patient and specific therapeutic concerns and decisions. Focus on cardiology and oncology
• discuss difficult decisions regarding therapeutic options and present strategies to deal with the patients.
• present options to improve the situation in the future

Learning Objectives:

After the presentation the participant should:

• understand the specificity of aging patients in clinical trials and therapeutics.
• be able to summarize the problems that are most relevant to aging patients in areas like cardiology and oncology
• learn about the dilemmas and decisions facing health professionals regarding this group of patients, and acquire some notions about the best strategies to deal with those.
• have a notion of options for the future that is useful in future decisions in the hospital