Ansthetic Implications For Geriatric Outpatient

Aging is a progressive, universally prevalent physiological process that produces measurable changes in the structure and decremental alteration of the function of tissues and organs. Changes that are not universal or that do not increase in severity or magnitude in proportion to chronologic age are probably not manifestations of aging but, rather, are usually signs or symptoms of age related disease. 4Examples of major changes that are considered physiological in elderly subjects include: Altered cerebral blood flow autoregulation9, decline in afferent and efferent nerve conduction velocities and the rate of signal processing within brain stem and spinal cord, elevated both plasma epinephrine and norepinephrine at rest and in response to stress.