[Perioperative patient blood management in the aged-more than only transfusion? : Review of the 4th symposium of the working group on anemia on the occasion of the annual meeting of the German Geriatric Society in Frankfurt 2019].

Anemia is frequent in older people with one in two geriatric inpatients being affected. Therefore, in elective surgery, such as endoprosthetic treatment it is very likely that anemia is already present in a preoperative setting. So far there are no particular guidelines about perioperative management of anemia in geriatric patients. The existing recommendations of the Patient Blood Management (PBM) network cooperation and the current Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany (AWMF) S3 guidelines on preoperative anemia refer to all patients aged >18 years but without particular consideration of the growing number of oldest old orthogeriatric patients. This is more problematic as anemia in the aged has been shown to be different from anemia in younger patients in terms of diagnostics and treatment. Based on several interdisciplinary lectures, this year the symposium of the working group on anemia of the German Geriatric Society (DGG) focused on the problems of perioperative PBM in orthogeriatric patients and encouraged the discussion about developing PBM treatment recommendations for this patient group.