ABSTRACT
Until the nineteenth century, the spectrum of human diseases, life span and causes of death had largely remained unchanged. In the twentieth century, best-performance life expectancy unexpectedly started to increase by a quarter of a year per year (Oeppen and Vaupel 2002). Reasons for these advances were improved environmental hygiene, an increased productivity of agriculture, and a breakthrough in biomedical sciences in the last decades of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century (De Flora et al. 2005). In parallel, a shift from infectious to chronic degenerative diseases as predominant causes of death took place. As our lifespan is still increasing and age is a major risk factor for most of these chronic diseases, these diseases will continue to play a central role as the dominant cause of death. The ongoing demographic change is associated with more patients having serious comorbidities.
