Advanced age alone does not significantly increase perioperative risk; rather, underlying pathologic changes drive cardiovascular and pulmonary complications.
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Supports comorbidity-focused perioperative evaluation over age alone; leaves open prospective validation in contemporary surgical populations.
Contrary to earlier findings, elderly patients are not at significantly greater risk of perioperative morbidity or mortality than younger patients simply because of advanced age. Increased risk, when present, is attributable to pathologic changes that are not uniformly seen in all geriatric patients. Most perioperative morbidity is caused by cardiovascular and pulmonary complications. The author discusses an appropriate preoperative evaluation and recommends selective ancillary tests to screen for high-risk patients.
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Jerry Johnson (1983) studied this question.
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