AGS 2005 Annual Meeting Highlights

The American Geriatrics Society’s 2005 Annual Meeting, in Orlando, FL, was one of our best attended yet. Thousands of geriatrics health care providers, researchers, and educators—many involved in long-term care—traveled from as far away as Australia to attend. During the meeting, which ran from May 11 through May 15, more than 1000 geriatrics experts presented symposia, core curriculum sessions, workshops, papers, posters, and reports, including the Society’s landmark, “Caring for Older Americans: The Future of Geriatric Medicine.”

With input from over 200 geriatrics experts, the report summarizes the progress geriatrics has made in providing high-quality elder care and warns of future threats to the quality of that care. (I discuss the report, including the recommendations and call to action with which it concludes, in my June column. For more, please visit https://www.managedhealthcareconnect.com/home/altc.)

Among other annual meeting highlights was a symposium on co-morbidity and multiple morbidity. Titled “Co-morbidity from Bedside to Bench,” the session provided an overview of the AGS and the National Institute on Aging’s recent and important Conference on Co-morbidity. Five researchers who participated in the two-day conference led the symposium. Although roughly 65% of adults age 65 and older have two or more chronic conditions, and 43% have three or more, researchers explained, there is still much we don’t know about effectively assessing and treating co-morbidity and multiple morbidity. One condition may make it difficult to diagnose others—a patient’s severe arthritis, for example, may prelude a stress test, and thereby complicate diagnosis of co-morbid heart disease.

To better care for the growing number of elderly patients with multiple health problems, physicians and researchers need to develop new models for diagnosing and treating co- and multiple morbidities, concluded the researchers, led by moderator G. Darryl Wieland, PhD, from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. The annual meeting also included a celebration of the John A. Hartford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary. A preconference session focused on several foundation initiatives aimed at enhancing primary care clinicians’ abilities to provide high-quality care by fostering teamwork across disciplines and settings. The session was followed by a party, complete with cake, at which attendees crooned “Happy Birthday” to the Foundation, the nation’s leading philanthropy with a sustained interest in aging and health.

Among the many other noteworthy annual meeting offerings were presentations summarizing the latest findings on preventing, delaying, and treating Alzheimer’s disease; research on the efficacy of vitamin D supplementation in lowering the risk of falls; related work investigating the adequacy of vitamin D and calcium supplementation in nursing homes; and findings on how patients’ end-of-life treatment preferences may change as their health deteriorates. If you weren’t able to make it to Orlando, or missed some of our offerings there, please visit our “Virtual Annual Meeting”—which includes the full text of “Caring for Older Adults,” and a webcast of the co-morbidity symposium—at www.americangeriatrics.org. Next year’s AGS Annual Meeting, in Chicago, IL, runs from May 3 through May 7, 2006. We hope to see you there! Regards,