geriatric diabetes

The age concept for elderly diabetes is currently not unified. In China, the 1980 United Nations proposal is commonly adopted, defining diabetic patients aged 60 and above as elderly diabetes; while some countries use 65 as the dividing line. Elderly diabetes can be divided according to the time of onset into diabetes onset in the elderly period and diabetes onset in young adulthood that continues into the elderly period. The former is almost entirely type 2 diabetes; the latter is mostly type 2 diabetes, but also includes a very small number of type 1 diabetes patients. Especially as people age, physiological and psychological degeneration occurs, and they are prone to coexisting with many diseases, making elderly diabetes more complex and more difficult to treat than diabetes in young adults. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the many characteristics of elderly diabetes in order to carry out reasonable prevention and treatment.