Patient-centered care in geriatric cardiology

Geriatric cardiology involves providing cardiovascular care to older adults in relation to aging. Although cardiovascular diseases are the most common diseases faced by older adults, they often co-occur with numerous aging-related challenges, such as multimorbidity, frailty, polypharmacy, falls, functional and cognitive impairment, which present challenges to implementing standard disease-based treatment strategies. Faced with these complexities, patient-centered care in geriatric cardiology strives to direct all management toward the achievement of an individual's prioritized health and life goals by employing shared decision-making to align treatment with goals, utilizing stated goals to navigate situations of treatment uncertainty, and pro-actively mitigating aging-related risks. This fundamental change in cardiovascular medicine from disease-centered management to patient-centered goal-directed care is necessary to facilitate wellness, independence, and favorable quality of life outcomes in the older adult population.