NEW YORK — With age come such things as catheters, colostomy bags and adult diapers. Now add another indignity — having to drop your pants and show these things to a complete stranger.

Three senior women, all with medical problems, say Transportation Security Administration (FSA) officers made them take off their clothes during screening at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport last week.

One claimed she was forced to lower her pants and underwear in front of an agent so that her back brace could be inspected. Another said agents made her pull down her waistband to show her colostomy bag. A third said she was forced to drop her pants so an agent could inspect the insulin pump strapped to her leg.

"This was outrageous," Lenore Zimmerman, 85, said Monday. "For some reason, they decided I look like a terrorist."

While not confirming all details, the TSA said a preliminary review shows officers followed procedures. But experts said the potential for such searches will increase as the U.S. population ages and receives prosthetics and other medical devices, some of which cannot go through screening machines.

"You have pacemakers, you have artificial hips, you have artificial knees," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "As we get older and we keep ourselves together, it's going to take more and more surgery. There's going to be more and more medical improvements, but that can create what appears to be a security issue."

Prosthetic devices can set off metal detectors, and certain devices such as catheters and bags are visible on body scanners, making those passengers candidates for more thorough inspections. Metal detectors and wands can disrupt some devices such as implanted defibrillators, so those passengers must ask for pat-downs instead.

Ruth Sherman, 88, of Sunrise, Fla., said she was mortified when inspectors pulled her aside and asked about the bulge in her pants as she arrived for a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Nov. 28.

"I said, 'I have a bag here,' " she said on Monday, pointing to the bulge. "They didn't understand."

She said they escorted her to another room where two female agents "made me lower my sweatpants, and I was really very humiliated." She said she stood with her arms and legs outstretched, warning the agents not to touch her colostomy bag. Touching the bag can cause pain, she said.

"It's degrading. It's like someone raped you," Sherman said. "They didn't know how to handle a human being."

The next day, agents took Zimmerman, of Long Beach, N.Y., into a private room to remove her back brace for screening after she decided against going through a scanning machine because of her heart defibrillator. Zimmerman said she had to raise her blouse and lower her pants and underwear for a female TSA agent.

Bruce Zimmerman, her son, said the agents "should've patted her down."

"To have her pants and underpants pulled down is just beyond humiliating," he said Monday. "This is my mother we are talking about."

The third woman, Linda Kallish, 66, of Boynton Beach, Fla., was set to be on the same flight as Zimmerman. Because she is diabetic, she has a glucose monitor strapped to one leg and an insulin pump on the other.

After Kallish set off the metal detector, a female TSA officer ordered her into a private room and told her to take her pants off, Kallish said. She said the officer didn't touch her.

"So I took my pants off and showed it to her," Kallish said. "She just looked at it and said, 'Have a nice trip.' "

The TSA said Monday that it is still investigating.

The agency insists that security concerns come first, even if it means getting into passengers' drawers. In 2009, a Nigerian man tried to blow up a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day with explosives in his underpants.