X-Message-Number: 14780
From: "Jan Coetzee" <>
Subject: Surgery for Those Over 100 
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 20:20:20 -0400

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

------=_NextPart_000_0152_01C03DF7.D50A1C80
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"

US Study Endorses Surgery for Those Over 100 


CHICAGO (Reuters) - Age should not be a barrier to surgery for people who live 
to be 100 or more, according to a study released on Monday. 


``There have been excellent advancements in anesthetic administration, surgical 
techniques and postoperative care,'' said Ramesh Paladugu of New York Methodist 
Hospital in Brooklyn, who studied 61 surgeries there involving general 
anesthesia among people over the age of 100 in recent years. 


More than half of the patients were discharged to a nursing home, 30% returned 
to their families and 15 percent died, he said. 


``Elective surgery should not be deferred and emergency surgery should not be 
denied to patients older than 100 years because of their chronological age,'' 
Paladugu said in a report delivered to the annual clinical congress of the 
American College of Surgeons. 


``A patient's physiological age is more important than his or her chronological 
age. Therefore, as long as one's overall health is good, a centenarian should be
able to undergo surgical procedures without having any problems,'' he added. 


The issue is a significant one because people are living longer, the college 
said. 


In the 1930s the oldest patients having surgical procedures were over 70 while 
in the 1970s, 90 was typically the oldest age for surgery, it said. The first 
report of a surgical procedure being performed on someone over the age of 100 in
the United States was in 1985, it added. 


While the US population will grow by 53% between 1990 and 2015, the number of 
individuals older than age 85 will increase fivefold and the number of 
centenarians will multiply by a factor of 32, the college said. 


In the study presented on Monday the average age of the patients was 101 and the
oldest one was 111. 



------=_NextPart_000_0152_01C03DF7.D50A1C80

 Content-Type: text/html;

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14780