Transforming surgical care so older adults achieve treatment goals and maintain independence and vitality in their lives.

Welcome to the UCSF Center for Surgery in Older Adults (CSOA). We are an interdisciplinary team of researchers, educators, and care providers at UCSF dedicated to improving surgical care for older adults. As the baby-boomers age, an increasing number of older adults will develop surgical diseases. Our goal is to discover and implement patient-centered best practices in geriatric surgery that will help older patients achieve their treatment goals and maintain independence and vitality.

The UCSF Center for Surgery in Older Adults Research Collaborative includes investigators from a broad range of disciplines – surgery, anesthesia, rehabilitation services, geriatrics, palliative care, nursing, education, and health policy—who have expertise in quantitative research, qualitative research, and implementation science. Our overarching goal is to discover best practices in geriatric surgery through patient-centered outcomes assessment, comparative effectiveness analyses, and interventional trials. In addition, we identify and explore barriers to delivery of optimal care with the aim to improve implementation of interdisciplinary patient-centered surgical care for older adults. Read more >>

Featured Videos

A UC San Francisco team has developed a tool that can help determine -- and perhaps influence -- senior citizens' 10-year survivability rates.

"I want to talk with you today about prognosis. By prognosis I mean the expected outcomes of treatment. When most people hear the words prognosis they think about life expectancy, or how long someone has to live, and that’s what we’ll focus on today. In residency I realized just how hard this was to have these conversations, and that I had a lot of work to do. I went on to train in palliative care, so I could gain the advanced skills in talking to patients about prognosis, and general medicine research, so I could figure out how to study the science of prognosis and prognosis communication." Alexander Smith MD, MS MPH