Several waves of the severe acute respiratory syndrome - Corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic lie between the 2020 and 2022 editions of the Annual Cologne Symposium on Ageing Medicine. One of the indirect effects of SARS-CoV-2 - as the global emergency which claimed several million deaths to date -, is that it exposed vulnerable entities at both micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. From the patient interaction level, to the health care organization and community level, up to the policy level, respectively, the current pandemic has dramatically unveiled that pre-pandemic medical systems are not designed for those conditions more or less rapidly impacting different world populations.

Due to their unpreparedness, systems react with instruments recovered from previous global emergencies, often neglecting the substantial change protagonist of the XXI century – the aging of the world population. Sometimes these instruments have proven inadequate to combat a challenge that impacts both the fragility of the human kind and the one caused by the physiology and biology of aging. COVID-19 discloses to date the importance of the integrity and cross-talk of the different framework sectors rotating around the ageing person, from biology to intrinsic capacity, from personality to life events, from lifestyle to geographical and cultural marks. In the meantime, frailty has been accepted as the very core of geriatric medicine - going far beyond multimorbidity and chronological age - and incorporates aging processes essential to its development and reversibility.

The Department of Internal Medicine II would like to present these and other developments in Ageing Medicine at the 5^th Symposium, organized in cooperation with the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC), the Cluster of Excellence in Aging Research (CECAD) and the Department of Cardiology of the University Hospital of Cologne. Experts from the disciplines of Geriatrics, Nephrology, Cardiology and Oncogeriatrics will be giving their insights and latest data on chances and challenges of medical progress in advanced age.

This year we will also have the great honor to meet Franz Müntefering, Chairman of the German National Association of Senior Citizens' Organizations (BAGSO) from 2015-2021. Franz Müntefering is among others Member of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Berlin Demography Forum. His keynote lecture will focus on the meaning, challenges but most importantly chances of ageing in our time. We are also extremely grateful to host Dr. Bernd Zimmer, Vice-President of the North Rhine Medical Association (AEKNO) and Professor Martin Wehling, Director of the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology Mannheim at the University of Heidelberg, who will present crucial aspects of intersectoral healthcare and of pharmacotherapy in advanced age.

Following the success of the previous editions, thanks in no small part to the presentations by some of the major national and international representatives of Ageing Medicine and Gerontology, we are extremely grateful for this year‘s speakers. 

The language of the Symposium is German.

The 2022 edition of the symposium is organized by the Departments of Internal Medicine II and III of the University Hospital of Cologne in collaboration with the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC), Univ. of Cologne and CECAD - the Cluster of Excellence, Univ. of Cologne and Stiftung der Cellitinnen e.V.
We are looking forward to welcoming you.

With best regards

Prof. Dr. Dr. M. C. Polidori and Prof. Dr. P. Brinkkötter
on behalf of the organizers