About Geriatrics

Since the first professorship in geriatrics was founded in Malmö 1987, over 200 refereed papers have been published from the geriatric unit. The geriatric research group have developed from the beginning of the 1990s and at current around 30 post-graduates and co-workers (within several different professions) are working in our studies surrounding cognition and dementia, geriatric rehabilitation and gerontology. Several of our studies are conducted in collaboration with other departments within Lund University and Sölve Elmståhl is leader of the research group.

Research is conducted within the research areas; clinical and epidemiological research of cognition (function, participation and rehabilitation), and also geriatric nutrition. Interplay between research areas in post-graduates, research questions and the use of data. Procedural methods and reference material of the older population is part of our developmental department, particularly surrounding cognition, motor function and organ function/capacity, especially pulmonary, renal and cardiac functions. Further development includes function tests in coordination and flexibility is ongoing as part of studying motor deviation as an early determinant of cognitive disorder. Age effects on physical and cognitive function, is followed in longitudinal studies and related to imaging techniques and proteomics.

Test instruments developed at the department:

The Caregiver Burden Scale (CBS, entails 22 questions, download from the list on your right hand side) and a geriatric quality register instrument covering Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) the SveGer-instrument (entails 11 signal questions).