CGA collection of Age and Ageing articles

Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) has been a cornerstone of geriatric medicine for more than three decades, offering a structured, multidimensional approach to evaluating the complex needs of older adults. Despite its longevity and its availability to geriatricians as well as a wide range of medical and non‑medical professionals, CGA remains inconsistently implemented in routine clinical practice. Questions persist regarding the breadth of outcomes it influences and the contexts in which it provides the greatest benefit.

To address these uncertainties, Prof Nicola Veronese and colleagues undertook an umbrella review of systematic reviews examining the use of CGA across diverse clinical settings and populations of older people. Capturing the full spectrum of reported outcomes and to assess the strength and certainty of the evidence supporting CGA‑based interventions.

Existing literature consistently demonstrates that CGA is most effective in hospital medical settings, where high‑certainty evidence supports improvements in multiple health outcomes. Taken together, the current evidence suggests that CGA has substantial potential to enhance personalised and tailored care for older adults. Its established benefits in hospital medicine, combined with emerging signals from other clinical domains, highlight the need for continued research and thoughtful integration of CGA into everyday practice. The following article explores these themes in detail, examining the evidence base, identifying gaps, and outlining future directions for the use of CGA in geriatric care.

The collection

We invite you to read this collection of CGA articles published in Age and Ageing journal.

1. Comprehensive geriatric assessment in older people: an umbrella review of health outcomes
2. Comprehensive geriatric hospital-at-home increases the days at home in older adults compared to bed-based intermediate care: a propensity score matching analysis
3. New horizons in the role of digital data in the healthcare of older people
4. Integrating community services provision for older people living with severe frailty: implications from an England-wide survey
5. Geriatric evaluation and management inpatients spend little time participating in physically, cognitively or socially meaningful activity: a time–motion analysis
6. Core requirements of frailty screening in the emergency department: an international Delphi consensus study
7. Frailty and anticoagulants in older subjects with atrial fibrillation: the EUROSAF study
8. Preoperative clinical characteristics and 12-month outcomes following operative or non-operative management of asymptomatic aortic aneurysms
9. Supporting older people through Hospital at Home care: a systematic review of patient, carer and healthcare professionals’ perspectives
10. Geriatric evaluation and management inpatients spend little time participating in physically, cognitively or socially meaningful activity: a time–motion analysis