My name is Dr. Cynthia Arreola and I would like to talk to you about what we do in this field of medicine. I trained as a doctor at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, specializing in Geriatric Medicine at the Mexican Institute of Social Security. I also took part in a rotation at the “Hospital Clinic” of Barcelona during my period of medical residency.
Geriatrics is the branch of medicine dedicated to caring for the elderly and treating the diseases which afflict them.
My decision to study Geriatric Medicine was mainly based on my interest in the clinical part of this field of medicine. I have always been interested in being able to view the elderly patient as a whole, and not just treating specific organs in their body.
As the care of the elderly must be approached in an orderly, comprehensive manner, a model has been developed which covers all necessary areas: Socio-family, Mental, Biological and Functional. As Geriatric doctors, we can treat patients from a preventive approach, by making detections and recommendations at the right moment, or from the opposite approach, known as palliative medicine.
Part of the fulfillment I experience as a Geriatric doctor includes being able to help improve the quality of a person’s life, by improving the progress of patients who were in a wheelchair, for example, or by mitigating their pain so that they are able to move again; or even by diagnosing a neurological disease such as Parkinson's, where the correct treatment, administered at the right time, can lead to a patient being able to walk better.
