Surgical Outcomes in Older Adults

The research of Emily Finlayson, M.D., M.S., Associate Professor in Residence and Director of the UCSF Center for Surgery in Older Adults, focuses on using administrative data to examine ‘real world' surgical outcomes in the elderly. For example, in an analysis of operative mortality in 1.2 million Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older undergoing elective diagnostic high-risk surgery, she found that the risk of death increased dramatically with age. Her work examining the impact of age and comorbidity on operative mortality and survival among octogenarians undergoing cancer surgery demonstrated population-based mortality rates in octogenarians that were considerably higher than those reported in published reports from case series or trials. In Dr. Finlayson's most recent work, she uses a national nursing home registry to evaluate outcomes after surgery in long stay nursing home residents. She found that nursing home residents experienced high operative mortality for ‘low risk' procedures. After operations to remove the gallbladder or appendix, more that 1 out of 10 nursing home residents died after surgery. She has also used this data to evaluate survival and functional status after colon cancer surgery and found that nursing home residents experience substantial and sustained functional decline after surgery. One-year survival was less than 50%.