Perioperative Management and Integrated Surgical Care for Older Adults

Global populations are aging. With this, comes increasing incidence of neoplastic and degenerative disease, as well as traumatic injuries sustained because of falls from standing height. Surgical management is the mainstay of management for these conditions. However, this is complicated by such multimorbidity and frailty in older populations. This can contribute to high complications rates and adverse outcomes, including mortality. Frailty has been shown to be associated with such outcomes across a whole host of surgical specialties and settings. However, interventions to influence adverse outcomes in frail older surgical patients have not been widely studied. Evidence is needed to inform best practice, permit guideline development, and improve health and social outcomes for older people with surgical pathologies.