[Iatrogeny and the elderly].

Discussions about the impact of iatrogeny over general health were avoided and neglected for a very long time. It was brought to medical interest due to recent studies concerning therapeutic compliance, patient's medical education and acute awareness of ethical implications of medical activities. Even if iatrogeny was always present in medicine, we realized but recently the dimensions and the necessity of a coherent and systematic approach of this problem. Iatrogenic pathology in elderly population has even a bigger impact due to conjugation of two major demographic phenomena: an absolute and percentage increase of elderly population parallel with an increase of prevalence of iatrogenic pathology with age. That's why iatrogeny in elderly becomes a major health problem, unfortunately often ignored, neglected and even obscured inspite of well-recognized impact over duration and quality of patient's life as well as over the cost of medical assistance.