[Geriatric day clinics and rehabilitation].

If the present development of our population is not to result in a continued increase in care-requiring elderly people, the building and expansion of geriatric rehabilitation institutions is a matter of urgency. Numerous studies, some of which carried out in our own country, show how successful geriatric rehabilitation can be. Prerequisites are, apart from appropriately equipped facilities, the proper selection of those requiring care, adequate numbers of properly qualified personnel, and early initiation of any treatment needed. Thus, 70 to 80% of those originally scheduled for admission to an old persons' nursing home can be enabled to live more or less independently at home. Apart from geriatric hospitals, geriatric day clinics offer optimal possibilities for rehabilitation. They combine therapeutic effectiveness and economy with the advantage that, during treatment, the elderly person is not completely taken out of his familiar surroundings, which results in an improvement in his motivation to get well again quickly. At the same time, complicating diseases, such as, for example, diabetes mellitus, can be treated under conditions closely similar to those of the patient's subsequent day-to-day situation. In this sense, geriatric day clinics are not only desirable, but urgently needed institutions.