Editor's Note In adults more than 70 years of age, exposure to general anesthesia and surgery was associated with a subtle decline in memory and thinking skills in this study. Of 1,819 patients in the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, exposure to anesthesia after age 70 was linked to long-term…

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Editor's Note Spinal anesthesia was associated with lower mortality and morbidity rates after hip fracture repair than general anesthesia in this study that will be presented Saturday April 19 at the 2018 World Congress on Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine in New York City. In this analysis of 2,591 patients,…

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Editor's Note Frailty is an important risk factor for postoperative complications and failure to rescue, after both low-risk and high-risk surgical procedures, this study finds. In this study of 984,550 patients in the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, there was a dose-response association between increasing patient…

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Editor's Note Neurocognitive dysfunction is highly prevalent in total joint candidates and predisposes patients to suboptimal postoperative outcomes including increased ICU admissions and prolonged rehabilitation, this study finds. The researchers found that nearly 54% of 99 patients analyzed had neurocognitive dysfunction, which correlated with age more than 60 years, body…

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Editor's Note In this study led by Martin A. Makary, MD, MPH, professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) was associated with better outcomes than open procedures in the Medicare population. Of 233,984 Medicare patients who had one of seven common surgical…

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Editor's Note In this study, an interdisciplinary program that includes a coordinated approach by healthcare professionals in surgery, geriatrics, and anesthesiology was associated with improved postoperative outcomes for high-risk older patients having elective abdominal surgery. Compared with a control group (143 patients), older patients participating in the Perioperative Optimization of…

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Editor's Note Poor preoperative cognition, as assessed by preoperative Mini-Cog screening, is prevalent among older total joint patients and predictive of adverse outcomes, including postoperative delirium, longer hospital stay, and greater likelihood of discharge to a place other than home, this study finds. Of 211 patients 65 years of age…

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Editor's Note Elderly hip fracture patients were less likely to die or return to the emergency department (ED) after discharge if they received care under the Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) model of care, finds this study presented October 21 at the Anesthesiology 2017 annual meeting in Boston. PSH patients also…

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Editor's Note Most elderly hip fractures occur during warm months, and a greater number happen indoors rather than out, finds this study presented October 23 at the Anesthesiology 2017 annual meeting in Boston. In this analysis of 544 hip fracture patients treated at The Hospital of Central Connecticut from 2013…

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Editor's Note A new pilot study from the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) finds that adding geriatric-specific risk factors to traditional risk factors could significantly improve the ability of surgeons to predict poor surgical outcomes in older patients. The study involved 36,399 older surgical…

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