Why the study?
With an ageing global population, an increasing number of older people with multimorbidity, functional and cognitive impairment, and polypharmacy require routine and emergency anaesthesia.
Highlights the increasing need for perioperative services to manage the complex risks of anesthesia in the aging, frail population.
The global population is ageing, and by 2030, one in six people will be aged over 60 worldwide [ 1 ]. As a result, the number of older people requiring both routine and emergency anaesthesia for surgical procedures is expected to rise significantly [ 2 ]. This poses a number of challenges given that both the prevalence and degree of multi-morbidity, functional and cognitive impairment, and polypharmacy increase with age [ 2 ]. All of these factors lead to higher levels of risk, both in terms of surgery itself and the inherent risk of the accompanying anaesthetic [ 2 ]. As a result, there has been a rise in the number of perioperative services for older people, which aim to identify medical comorbidities, establish the level of risk, and pre-optimise older people undergoing both emergency and elective procedures [ 2 ].
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Barnes et al. (2023) studied this question.
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