Stop Treating 70- and 90-Year-Olds the Same
Despite there being 17 subgroupings for children between the ages of 0 – 18 years, there are only five subgroups for adults, with Americans aged 65 and older categorized as the same. This method of grouping means that older adults are being treated the same, in spite of the physiological changes that occur within the last 35 years of life. The difference between the “young old” and the “old old” is significant, with immune systems becoming weaker in later life, leading to increased rates of hospitalization and susceptibility to infections. Immunizations are less effective, meaning that older adults may require different doses of vaccines, more frequent vaccinations or even vaccines that are entirely different from a biological perspective. Procedures may provide little benefit to older patients, or even cause permanent decline. These issues could be tackled with more specific guidelines for health professionals, covering stressors such as poverty, illness, incarceration or racial prejudice that may prematurely push patients from adulthood into “oldhood”. A push for a greater focus on the older generation in medical studies could also help to better tailor healthcare. The CDC should extend childhood and adulthood classifications to include oldhood, and mandate older adults to be included in clinical studies.

Every summer around this time, pediatricians’ offices are flooded with children getting the vaccines they need to start another year of school.

Doctors base their advice on which shots patients should get when on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine recommendations. The guidelines are presented in two schedules, one for children, the other for adults, both divided into subgroups based on developmental biology and social behaviors common at different ages. Unfortunately, there’s a major problem with the guidelines. And it’s representative of a larger failing in our health care system.

There are 17 subgroupings for children from birth through age 18. That makes sense because, of course, a 6-month-old has had little time to develop immunity, weighs far less than an 8-year-old and is exposed to fewer people than a teenager. There are five subgroups for adults. But all Americans 65 and older — including the two fastest-growing segments of our population, the 80- to 90-year-olds and those over 100 — are lumped in a single group, as if bodies and behaviors don’t change over the last half-century of life.

You don’t need to be a doctor to see that this is absurd. Just as we don’t confuse toddlers with teenagers, or young adults with their middle-age parents, so, too, are we able to distinguish 70-year-olds from the nonagenarians a generation ahead of them.