The Gerontologist
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The Gerontologist, Vol 36, Issue 1 113-117, Copyright © 1996 by The Gerontological Society of America

ARTICLES

Normal versus pathological aging: knowledge of family practice residents

SC Beall, LA Baumhover, AJ Maxwell and RE Pieroni
Center for the Study of Aging, The University of Alabama School of Medicine, Tuscaloosa 35487-0326, USA.

Family physicians may lack discriminatory ability to differentiate normal aging from disease states. To assess such ability, 53 aging- related indicators or symptoms were presented to 65 physicians in three family practice residency programs. Respondents classified each symptom as normal aging or disease. On average, residents classified 73.4% of symptoms correctly. They were more likely to classify disease states correctly (80.0%) than to classify signs of normal aging correctly (66.8%). Misattribution of normal aging signs as disease may prompt physicians to overmedicate and overtreat patients, resulting in adverse clinical outcomes.




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Copyright © 1996 by The Gerontological Society of America.