Ageing of the globe’s population poses a great challenge for health-care systems around the world. This applies to the health-care personnel as well as medico-legal experts who have the responsibility of carrying out Medico Legal Assessments on personal damage in a rising number of the older people. Personal damage assessment among the elderly is quite complex. Consequently, the scarcity of tangible evidence is restricting the development of clear and formal guidelines on the subject. The main goal of the Medico Legal Assessment of Personal Damage in the old is to boost knowledge on this subject as well as establish standard procedures in this field.
Of note is that the number of people aged above 65 years is constantly increasing worldwide especially in Europe and North America. More so, these numbers are bound to increase in the near future. This scenario poses a real challenge for the national health-care services and also extrapolates to include Medico-Legal experts. The latter evaluates the personal damages caused by traumatic injuries in a rising number of the older population, most importantly in the legal framework of the liability of the third party.
The assessment and ascertainment of personal damage are complicated issues from both medico-legal and clinical points of view. The evaluation of personal damage in the elderly can be a very complex process due to an interplay of factors such as physio-pathological and functional modifications as a result of ageing, the heterogeneity of the elderly population in terms of functional status, the inadequate validated tools for the functional evaluation of the elderly in the medico-legal context and the need to adjust the procedures, timing and duration to suit the needs of the ageing population. Henceforth, guidelines on evaluation methods in the older people have been issued in attempt to offset the challenge of taking into account only the consequences of a particular injury without putting into consideration the age and the pre-existing conditions of the injured person.
There is no standard or fixed procedure on assessing the consequences of minor injuries that bear the risk of severely impairing older people. This poses a great risk since damage compensation is greatly decreased with age. The impact of these challenges on the daily practice of medico-legal experts is worth looking into at depth since a field with scarcity of evidence hinders the development of formal guidelines. Consequently, consensus statements are a very key resource in supporting the decision making process.