Chronic geriatric pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience affecting people over the age of 65 for more than 3 months, and which is associated with actual or potential tissue damage that is noncancerous in nature, or is described in terms of such damage. One common comorbidity associated with aging is being in pain (e.g., musculoskeletal pain), and it is estimated that approximately 50? of people with dementia have experienced pain, concordant with the statistics for older adults without dementia. Pain management for older adults differs significantly from that for younger adults, presenting more challenges. During pain assessments of community-dwelling older patients with dementia, it is difficult for the patient to inform other people about the location of the pain and past situations. Therefore, it is necessary to integrate information gathered from other professionals and family members and assess older adults’ daily life comprehensively. In this lecture, I will explain that it is important for formal and informal caregivers to understand how to flexibly use self-reported and dementiaspecific pain assessment scales according to the patient’s physical and cognitive status when assessing pain in older people with dementia. I will also talk about drug and non-drug therapies from the perspective of frailty.

Chiaki Ando has completed her Ph.D. at the age of 38 years from St.Luke’s college of Nursing, JAPAN. Now she is the head of geriatric nursing course of Nayoro City University, Japan. In 2007, her team translated Doloplus-2, a behavioral pain assessment scale for elderly individuals with verbal communication disorders, from French into Japanese, and the translated version was validated in 2012. Dr. Ando has currently researched focusing on the management of chronic pain in the elderly with frailty including dementia