News & Events: Outcomes Research in Older Populations

UCSF News reports that U.S. only a small number of nursing home residents are alive and ambulatory one year after undergoing lower extremity revascularization procedures with those still alive gaining little, if any, function: Only a few U.S. nursing home residents who undergo lower extremity revascularization procedures are alive and ambulatory a year after surgery, according to UCSF researchers, and most patients still alive gained little, if any, function. The study appears in the April 6 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine. "Our findings can inform conversations among physicians, [...]

Alexander Smith, M.D., MPH  discusses trends and news ideas about surgical outcomes percolating among thought leaders in the field including Emily Finlayson, M.D., M.S., Associate Professor of Surgery and Health Policy at UCSF, in a post at GeriPal, a geriatrics and palliative care blog. A while back people realized that outcomes of surgery in older people were probably better than previously believed. This led to a widespread perception that we were being ageist by not being aggressive enough in offering surgery to older adults.  We started operating on more older adults. We identified [...]

The New York Times reports in its "The New Old Age - Caring and Coping Blog" on the high-risk of performing surgery in older adults, even for otherwised routine operations. Even operations considered fairly routine in younger patients, like appendectomies, become high-risk for nursing home residents. "Something about undergoing anesthesia, the surgery's physiological assault on the body, impacts older people much more than we think," said Dr. Emily Finlayson, an Associate Professor of Surgery at University of California, San Francisco, and lead author of a recent study published in The [...]