RT Journal
A1 Kacey DJ, Perez-Tamayo A
T1 PRinciples and practice of geriatric surgery
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2012
FD May 9
VO 307
IS 18
SP 1981
OP 1981
DO 10.1001/jama.2012.4472
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2012.4472
AB 
Two premises underlie geriatric surgery textbooks: elderly patients respond differently to the stresses of surgery, and by understanding these differences, surgeons can enhance care and improve outcomes. A central theme of the first edition of Principles and Practice of Geriatric Surgery suggested that, when controlling for comorbid illness and emergency surgery, chronologic age is not a contraindication to surgery. A decade has passed since the first edition, and most, if not all, surgeons now accept that an individual's physiology trumps chronological age as a reliable determinant of operative risk. As such, the clinician's conundrum becomes how to objectively determine an individual's physiologic reserve. For instance, many surgeons operate on elderly patients who recover quite uneventfully despite expectations to the contrary. More disconcerting, however, are the patients expected to tolerate surgery but who lack so-called reserve and instead follow a downward postoperative course.