At each age, its disease. If octogenarians are at risk of having to face cancer and cardiovascular disorders, at 100, the most dreadful disease is pneumonia. Indeed, according to a study carried out by the team of Doctor Catherine Evans, from King’s College London, pneumonia is the main cause of death for centenarians, along with old age.
The study, published by the journal Plos One, reviews more than 35,000 death certificates of centenarians who disappeared between 2001 and 2010. The scientists compared this data with that of people who died between the ages of 80 and 99. Result: a third of the certificates of centenarians refer to old age, or fragility. In octogenarians, this concerns only 0.9% of cases.
Identify vulnerable people
Nearly one in five centenarians, or 18%, succumb to pneumonia, compared to 6% of 80-85 year olds, while only 4% die of cancer and 9% of a stroke, against 24% and 17% of octogenarians. The study also reveals that a majority of people over the age of 100 die in hospital, particularly in cases of pneumonia.
Experts advise health professionals to identify fragile people and take care of them as soon as possible to limit cases of pneumonia as much as possible thanks to appropriate treatment. “We need to review the conditions for treating pathologies according to the types of elderly people. In the case of pneumonia, if we only deal with the acute episode, without taking into account the patient as a whole, the prognosis will not necessarily be good”, explains to the site of the Figaro Professor Gilles Berrut, gerontologist at the Nantes University Hospital.
