Dtsch Arztebl Int
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Elderly patients are a growing and vulnerable group with an elevated perioperative risk. Perioperative treatment pathways that take these patients' special risks and requirements into account are often not implemented in routine clinical practice. ⋯ The evidence-based and guideline-consistent care of elderly patients requires not only close interdisciplinary, interprofessional, and cross-sectoral collaboration, but also the restructuring and optimization of habitual procedural pathways in the hospital. Elderly patients' special needs can only be met by a treatment concept in which the entire perioperative phase is considered as a single, coherent process.