Travel and Health in the Elderly: A Medical Handbook. - book reviews

Age and Ageing,  May, 1993  by Michael Hall

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I.B. McIntosh Lancaster: Quay Publishing, 1992. 146 pp. Price 9.95[pounds] (paperback).

The elderly want to enjoy their remaining years and have been encouraged by doctors to live dangerously. Many will do this by travelling and it is fitting that doctors should advise them of the potential risks that they may encounter. The topic is worthy of a question in the DGM.

This book is extremely readable and well illustrated with little cartoons and short case histories. The ten chapters cover--Ageing (briefly) and the possible effects of travel on the individual; an assessment and management protocol for a Travel Clinic consultation; travel-induced illness prevention clinics; travel hazard and the effects of pre-existing disease; air travel; land and sea travel; travel-induced illness; the physically frail and disabled traveller; the high risk traveller and the adventurous traveller. These outline the risks that the various types of travel pose and that groups may encounter. Travel, however rewarding and exciting, requires careful planning. Reading this book will help doctors and nurses in the primary care team to advise their elderly patients who are planning to travel to anticipate illness, and on some of the hazards that they may encounter. Geriatricians and elderly travellers themselves will benefit from reading it, but the latter will need to absorb the advice without being put off by the potential hazards described. This book ought to be in all libraries.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Oxford University Press
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group