Older patients will likely have a heavier burden of cardiac as well as micro- and macrovascular disease; they may also have a reduced glomerular filtration rate (GFR); and they will be at-risk for other adverse factors such as polypharmacy that we see continually in older patients. All this adds up to a reduced life expectancy.  As also noted in Figure 10, because older patients are more likely to be compromised by hypoglycemia, it is important to target these patients for less ambitious HbA_1C goals, between 7.5% and 8%.[2] It is always possible to try to tighten this goal up a bit later, but the focus must be on safety and the overall targets for these patients, who may have a reduced life expectancy, as well as all the other social factors mentioned above.  Kapustin J. J Nurse Pract. 2014; 00:00 – 00.