Article / Updated 03-26-2016
When deciding on treatment for an elderly patient with diabetes, you first have to consider the individual. Does this person have a low life expectancy? Or is this person physiologically young, with the possibility of living for 15 or 20 more years? If the patient is only 65 years old and in relatively good health, he or she has a life expectancy of at least 18 more years — plenty of time to develop complications of diabetes, especially macrovascular disease, eye disease, kidney disease, and nervous system disease.