Urinary incontinence is often part of the aging process. After age 65, about 10% of men and 20% of women have some incontinence. Incontinence is a severe problem in less than 5%. Often incontinence is temporary. Listed below are seven general causes of incontinence.
Tuberculosis is a chronic infection involving usually the lungs but also may involve other organs. About one fourth of newly discovered cases each year occur in elderly patients. Some of these are new infections, but many are recurrences of past infections. New, effective methods of treatment are available and have changed the management of tuberculosis.
Tremor, or shaking movements, may have many causes. Essential tremor is not caused by an underlying disease; thus, it does not mark a progressive or a debilitating problem. Most cases begin before age 25. However, a variety called senile tremor begins in old age. This tremor involves the arms, hands, and face. It usually starts in, and it may remain confined to, one side of the body. It tends to progress slowly.
Tinnitus is the hearing of sounds, either in one or in both ears, that are not occurring in the environment. It is often but not invariably associated with hearing loss. Each individual may describe the sounds that he or she hears differently. Bells, ringing, whistling, and hissing are common descriptions.
TIAs are small, reversible strokes. When blood flow is temporarily insufficient for part of the brain, the brain tissue will not function properly. The changes that the patient experiences are real but reversible. The affected part of the brain loses function while the blood flow is insufficient, but it does not die, which would cause permanent loss of function. The variety of symptoms produced by TIAs is large and may involve sensory or motor functions, or both. Occasionally the symptoms may be so mild and transient that they are ignored by the patient and family alike.
Thyroid nodules are tumors, most of which are benign, but some of which are malignant and invasive cancers. These tumors are treatable and increase in frequency with age. They are more common in women. Nodules are an enlargement of the thyroid gland that can often be felt by your physician at the time of physical examination. In patients with a history of prior radiation treatment to the neck, either near the thyroid gland or near a gland called the thymus (such radiation treatment was popular in past decades, although it is no longer used), the risk of nodules is high. These nodules tend to develop long after the treatment.
When inflammation occurs in the large blood vessels, the arteries that run beneath the skin on the temporal (temple) areas of the head, the disease is temporal arteritis. Frequency of occurrence increases with aging. It often occurs in association with a problem called polymyalgia rheumatica. Temporal arteritis presents with throbbing headaches. These headaches occur in the area of the involved artery.
Tardive dyskinesia is the name given to a motion disorder that is an occasional problem among the elderly. It is the result of drug therapy, in effect a side effect of a selected list of drugs. These include the following drugs or drug families:
Swimmer’s ear is caused by inflammation in the external ear canal. It is usually caused by a bacterial or fungal infection that results when moisture is retained in the ear canal. Because the ear canal has little or no surrounding fat and is close to cartilage and bone, any swelling that occurs with the inflammation will cause pain in the ear. There may also be itching in the ear canal and if the swelling is sufficient to cause the canal to go shut, there will be hearing loss as well.
Many aging processes may increase the risk of surgery. Whether this increased risk is acceptable depends on the nature of the problem prompting the surgery. If it is an acute, life-threatening circumstance for which there are few or no alternatives, a high degree of risk may be acceptable in solving the problem. If the problem is not urgent and involves an elective procedure, it may be more appropriate to delay surgery until control of complicating factors reduces the risks as low as possible.
A sudden loss of vision or partial loss of vision in one eye is an urgent warning sign of dysfunction of the blood vessels. This sort of change may involve the entire field of vision in one eye or it may affect only a part of the field of vision. A patient may experience the sensation of a curtain descending over one eye with a fading of vision. The term that physicians use for this condition is amaurosis fugax. A more common term is transient monocular blindness or fleeting blindness involving only one eye.
