Older Adults Having Surgery Less Frequently -- but It Depends on the Surgery and Hospital

A new study from the University of Chicago Medicine (UChicago Medicine) published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society found abdominal surgery is being performed in older adults less frequently, especially among adults over the age of 85, reports EurekAlert . "This suggests we're getting better at determining who would benefit most from a surgery, and also possibly that we've developed better and less invasive alternative treatments," said UChicago Medicine Professor Daniel Rubin. There are some exceptions to this trend, with Rubin noting that major academic medical centers "were the only hospitals that saw an increase in the frequency of procedures performed on older adults. We think this may be due to increased specialization and that some procedures that may not be available at a smaller or rural institution are more likely to be offered at a larger, academic hospital." Less surprising was an increase in certain operations like the Whipple procedure for pancreatic cancer, due to the fact that few less-invasive options are available for treating the disease. "My hope is that this research, and other studies like it, will help us better understand how to help older adults prepare for major surgeries, and help us identify which individual patients will benefit the most from surgical intervention," Rubin concluded.