Importance of clinical nutrition in therapy to older adults

Abstract

This book chapter approaches the importance of clinical nutrition of older adults in therapy. The field of geriatric nutrition is expanding and it is not possible to give a full review of the whole scientific scope due to its extraordinary width. Restricted to the year 2015 there were 16201 papers listed in the PUBMED (PubMed Health. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); access 14.07.2015) database concerning “Nutrition” as a subject heading and 1241 systematic reviews. This chapter will NOT give an overview of nutrition “as a therapy”. This is covered elsewhere in this book and in external sources [1–5] same with the “Nutrition”—aspect of elderly people living in the community [6, 7]. Instead, the chapter focuses on the role of the nutrition process as a part of procedures connected with the framework of “developing drugs for the older patient”. This discussion is composed from two different perspectives: a hospital geriatrician and a social gerontologist. The key question for this chapter is: “What details of nutrition have to be considered on the way to developing drugs for elder patients?”.