Does increased life expectancy imply active life expectancy?

Abstract

From Danish results, it is argued that longer life need not imply worse health. If we as individuals and society will prevent the "pawnbroker-diseases," increase access to geriatric rehabilitation, and supply necessary services in an individualised way, most added years can be active years. The following conclusions are drawn: In the first decades after the year 2000, morbidity, disability and mortality will be postponed, but treatment will be more important for prolongation of life than prevention. Therefore, the net result will be extension of morbidity. The next question is how severe disability will be among the increased number of people who have a disease, but are not dying from it. The elderly will be more healthy in the future, but the prevalence of chronic disabling diseases may not change, or may even increase. That is because healthy men and women can postpone disability and death until higher ages (successful aging), but some elderly persons live with premature disabling diseases, which might have killed them some decades ago. When elderly people make the transition from autonomy to dependence in the course of a disease, it is possible by early geriatric intervention and rehabilitation to restore them to functional levels and provide them with more active years. It is possible to disseminate geriatric rehabilitation to a much wider population of elderly with multipathology and social problems. In this way, disability can be overcome in a higher fraction of diseased elderly.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)