Emergency surgery in geriatrics: A retrospective evaluation in a single center

Abstract

BACKGROUND: As life expectancy increases in humans, surgical procedures applied to the elderly people are also increasing in par-allel with the developments in surgery and postoperative care. A significant number of studies investigating the morbidity-mortality of geriatric patients are related to patients who are undergoing emergency operations. The present study aims to investigate the factors affecting mortality and morbidity after emergency surgery in elderly people. METHODS: The data of 200 patients aged 65 years and over who were operated under emergency conditions in the University of Health Sciences Kartal Dr. Lütfi Kırdar Training and Research Hospital between January and December 2018 were evaluated retro-spectively. RESULTS: Patient’s demographic information, including age, gender, ASA physical status, comorbidities, functional dependency or non-dependency of patients, types of operation, anesthesia technique, duration of operation, intraoperative blood transfusion, the changes of hematocrit levels (during the perioperative period), the outcome after surgery (intensive care admission or ward transfer), were recorded. The risk prediction of short-term mortality has been estimated using CCI and APACHE II scoring systems. CONCLUSION: The mean age of the patients was 74.8±6.7 and the number of females (n=134, 67%) outweighed the males. Higher ASA physical status scores, dependent living conditions, long operation time, general anesthesia, intraoperative blood transfusion, low Htc values (<25%), high APACHE II scores and lower scores of 10-years survival by CCI were the factors that affected the acceptance into ICU.