The geriatric nurse recognizes that the body's homeostatic mechanisms may be compromised in the
a. 79-year-old with moderate Alzheimer disease who requires assistance with all activities of daily living (ADLs).
b. 73-year-old with a history of chronic bronchitis who lives with family.
c. 86-year-old who lost a spouse and is moving into an assisted living facility.
d. 69-year-old with peripheral vascular dis-ease who is visited by home health care weekly.
C
Declining physiologic function and increased prevalence of disease, particularly in the old-old (age 85 or older), are in part a result of a reduction in the body's ability to respond to stress through all of its homeostatic mechanisms. The important point is that older adults often en-counter profound and repeated losses; the time between the occurrences of these losses is often short, resulting in an inadequate period for resolution and return to a baseline state, thus putting them at risk for illness. Although the other patients may have compromised homeostatic me-chanisms, the 86-year-old patient is most likely to exhibit this phenomenon.
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