Geriatrics: A Selected Up‐to‐date Bibliography

This is the first annual revision of the Geriatrics Bibliography. Rather than publish only new references, the previous list has been totally revised. Approximately one quarter of the old references have been replaced by more current or more detailed articles. In addition, the bibliography has been expanded to include a number of new topics, with over one hundred more references. In preparing this revised list, many good articles were, of necesssity, excluded. The number of publications pertinent to clinical geriatrics has grown quickly over the past year. Preference, as before, was given to recent publications, since they usually provide a list of the important earlier articles. Most of the references are less than five years old; the exceptions deal with specific issues not covered as well in the subsequent literature. An occasional review article is cited to cover gaps in the geriatric literature or merely to amplify aspects of common diseases that have been widely ignored outside of geriatric medicine. Most of the references selected deal specifically with an elderly patient population. Exceptions include those dealing with diseases remarkably common in the aged but for which no adequate study from a geriatric viewpoint exists, e.g., monoclonal gammopathy, Paget's disease, pulmonary emboli. All studies in geriatrics are confounded by questions of “normal” aging as opposed to the concomitants of aging frequent in our society: inactivity, relative obesity, malnutrition, and psychosocial trauma. The first set of references (I) includes synopses on the causation of aging, the second (II) on the systems known to degenerate with advancing age. The next two topics (III, IV) are clinically related: one deals with the basic distinctions of the geriatric patient and the other with the ancillary services available. As geriatrics is basically a multidisciplinary field, the bulk of the references are cited by pertinent specialty.