Cardiac Surgery in the Elderly Patient

Cardiac surgery in the elderly patient.

BACKGROUND As life expectancies rise and the number of persons over age 75 in the population increases, the proper treatment of elderly cardiac patients is becoming a matter of ever greater medical and political importance. METHODS In collaboration with the German Federal Quality Assurance Office (Bundesgeschäftsstelle Qualitätssicherung, BQS), the authors analyzed the risk profiles of elderl...

The elderly patient and cardiac surgery - a mini-review.

INTRODUCTION Due to the increase in average life expectancy and the higher incidence of cardiovascular disease with advancing age, more elderly patients present for cardiac surgery nowadays. Advances in pre- and postoperative care mean that more elderly patients can be operated on safely and with a satisfactory outcome. Currently, coronary artery bypass surgery, aortic and mitral valve surgery ...

[Cardiac surgery and the elderly].

Cardiac surgery continues to play a key role in our therapeutic arsenal against many heart diseases. This is still the case despite the recent and striking progress regarding specific drugs or different forms of cardiac intervention. However, in relation to the elderly patient, this therapeutic modality is one of the fields where agebased discrimination has been practiced for years, that is, th...

[Cardiac surgery in elderly patients].

OBJECTIVE To compare morbidity and mortality of cardiac surgery patients according to age below or above 75 years. DESIGN Descriptive retrospective study. PATIENTS A total of 2,470 consecutive patients admitted to our Intensive Medicine Unit between November 2000 and December 2005 who were in the immediate postoperative period after cardiac surgery. Of these patients, 1,983 were younger tha...

[Cardiac surgery in elderly patients].