Cardiac Disease in the Elderly: Interventions, Ethics, Economics

Today coronary heart disease and end stage heart failure represent the leading causes of hospitalization and death in civilized countries. Annual inpatient and outpatient expenditure on new diseases in the Western world, combined with an increasing life expectancy, confront medicine and the financing society with previously unknown problems. In the > 65 year age group any form of medical treatment of modern cardiology as well as cardiovascular surgery is available. Even outside medical studies, these procedures are accompanied without an unacceptable increased risk to the individual patient. The aim of this book is to present the findings and the prospects of success in a transparent manner. The presentations support the process of making medical decisions and give scientists and politicians the opportunity to discuss effects, backgrounds and provisional solutions.