Chronicity and aging in cardiology: Geriatric cardiology, cardiac rehabilitation or care-related cardiogeriatric rehabilitation?

The population of elderly adults is constantly increasing and age is a strong determinant of the development of chronic diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases; therefore old subjects represent a very high proportion of cardiac patients. Since cardiology is progressively more and more involved in the care of aged patients, a new area of Cardiology has been identified, the Geriatric Cardiology (GC). On the other hand, Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR) and GC show a wide overlap, and GC seems to be the application in the aged cardiac patient of the core-components that CR has already tested in younger cardiac patients. Now, CR is probably the cardiological area thai seems better equipped, both from a cultural and organizational point of view, to care the aged cardiac patients who are often complex and frail, with multimorbidity, and "frequent users" of the health care services. The CR is therefore a concrete response, already ready and operative, to the demographic expansion of chronicity and aging. Beyond the definitions, CR and GC operate according to principles and methods which are in large part common; thus, CR and GC could merge themselves into a new area of cardiology, the Cardiogeriatric Rehabilitation (CGR).