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GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast

Jun 30, 2022

You have a patient with dementia severe enough that she cannot recognize relatives.  She falls and breaks her hip.  Should she have an operation, and risk the pain, potential complications, and attendant delirium associated with the operation?  Should she be treated non-operatively, with aggressive symptom management? ...


Jun 23, 2022

Cancer screening is designed to detect slow growing cancers that on average take 10 years to cause harm.  The benefits of mammography breast cancer screening rise with age, peak when women are in their 60s, and decline thereafter. That is why the American College of Physicians recommendation regarding mammography for...


Jun 16, 2022

There are a lot of old myths out there about managing urinary tract symptoms and UTI’s in older adults.  For example, we once thought that the lower urinary tract was sterile, but we now know it has its own microbiome, which may even provide protection against infections. So giving antibiotics for a positive urine...


Jun 9, 2022

In the US, geriatrics “grew up” as an academic profession with a heavy research base.  This was in part due to the tremendous support of the National Institute on Aging.  Clinical growth of geriatrics programs has lagged academic research, despite the rapid aging of the population. 

Palliative care, in contrast, saw...


Jun 2, 2022

We are two and a half years into the COVID pandemic.  We’ve lived through lockdowns, toilet paper shortages, mask mandates, hospital surges where ICU’s overflowed, a million COVID deaths, prolonged school closures, development and roll out of novel vaccines, an explosion of social isolation and loneliness, and the...