[The elderly travellers]

Abstract

We attend a considerable increase in the number of old travellers, because of facilitation of transport, and increase of the life expectation without incapacity. This way, practicians will be more and more confronted with old travellers avid councils before their departure. In spite of the risk of intercurrent pathologies, data shows that the age in itself is not a contra-indication of travel: the stage of life considered as a limit becomes a period privileged to discover the world. On a theoretical plan, the ageing characterized by a reduction of the functional reserve of organ, represents more a fragility than a contra-indication. On the other hand, comorbidities and their accumulation make elderly more vulnerable to medical complications potentially serious and in conditions of stress than can gather a travel. We could propose to the vulnerable old patient avid to leave, in coordination with the geriatrician and the travel doctor, a personalized prevention in the form of a consultation "old traveller" where we would adopt a geriatric approach to review the compatibility between the health and the type of travel, in particular at elderly with polypathologies and many treatments.