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Fainting

Evaluation And Treatment



The patient's history is the most important part of the evaluation, and the physical examination focuses on blood pressure and heart evaluation to exclude the life-threatening causes of fainting. Therapy should be directed toward minimizing multiple risks of fainting, avoiding toxic interventions, and treating specific symptomatic diseases (for example, with pacemakers for certain conduction diseases in the heart), while basing treatment on the underlying disease, rather than on age per se.



PÁLMI V. JÓNSSON

BIBLIOGRAPHY

JÓNSSON, P. V., and LIPSITZ, L. A. "Dizziness and Syncope." In Principles of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology, 3d ed. Edited by William R. Hazzard, Edwin L. Bierman, John P. Blass, Walter H. Ettinger, Jr., and Jeffrey B. Halter. McGraw-Hill Inc., 1994. Pages 1165–1181.

LINZER, M.; YANG, E. H.; ESTES, N. A., III; WANG, P.; VORPERIAN, V. R.; and KAPOOR, W. N. "Diagnosing Syncope. Part 2: Unexplained Syncope. Clinical Efficacy Assessment Project of the American College of Physicians." Annals of Internal Medicine 127, no. 1 (1997): 76–86.

SHAW, F. E., and KENNY, R. A. "The Overlap between Syncope and Falls in the Elderly." Postgraduate Medical Journal 73, no. 864 (1997): 635–639.

FALLS

See BALANCE AND MOBILITY

Additional topics

Medicine EncyclopediaAging Healthy - Part 2Fainting - Basic Mechanisms And Predisposition In Elderly People, Causes, Evaluation And Treatment