Cholecystectomy in octogenarians: recent 5 years' experience

BACKGROUNDS/AIMS Aging of population is leading to more operative treatments on elderly patients in various aspects. Growing numbers of patients are going through operations about cholecystitis in the same sense. We tried to survey them anew about remarkably increasing octogenarian patients and the outcome after operative management for cholecystitis seeking to improve treatment result. METHODS For 5 years, from March 2007 to Febraury 2012, 57 octogenarian patients had cholecystectomy among total 380 cases. Patients were compared between total patients and octogenarians on perioperative follow-up findings in medical records. RESULTS Underlying diseases were prevailing in octogenarian by more than 70% of cases. Severe acute cholecystitis was more often observed in octogenarians and procedures like endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreaticography were more often performed preoperatively, showing more frequent conversion to open method from laparoscopic procedure. Complications such as peritonitis, sepsis, wound problem, including mortality were much more common in octogenarian cholecystectomy patients. When compared to total cholecystectomy patient group, octogenarian patients had more problems in every items significantly (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS High rates of complications and mortality accompanying prolonged symptoms and examinations was inevitable for octogenarian patients after cholecystectomy. Operative treatment per se appears to be inevitable, thus it should make the patients be informed about risks with more attention to every aspect of care.