ReviewOpen access emergency medicine : OAEM2015
Emergency surgery in the elderly: challenges and solutions.
Review in Open access emergency medicine : OAEM, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 81 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Article
- Is there a difference in textbook outcomes of emergency cholecystectomy in older patients compared with younger patients?World journal of emergency surgery : WJES · 2025Article
- Team-based, Multidisciplinary Care in the Emergency Department.Emergency medicine clinics of North America · 2025Review
- Predictors of emergency abdominal surgery for patients aged 90 years or older: A retrospective study.Surgery open science · 2024Article
- The Emergency Surgery Frailty Index (EmSFI) in Elderly Patients with Acute Appendicitis: An External Validation of Prognostic Score.World journal of surgery · 2023Observational
- Accountable care organizations and use of surgery among patients with Alzheimer disease and related dementias.The American journal of managed care · 2023Article
- Predictive value of total psoas muscle index for postoperative physical functional decline in older patients undergoing emergency abdominal surgery.BMC surgery · 2023Article
- Impact of Geriatric Admissions on Workload in the Emergency Department.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Surgical mortality in patients in extremis: futility in emergency abdominal surgery.BMC surgery · 2023Observational
- Clinical-pathological features and treatment of acute appendicitis in the very elderly: an interim analysis of the FRAILESEL Italian multicentre prospective study.European journal of trauma and emergency surgery : official publication of the European Trauma Society · 2022Article
- External Prospective Validation of the Modified CriSTAL Score for 30- and 90-day Mortality in Geriatric Urgent Surgical Patients.Journal of gastrointestinal surgery : official journal of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract · 2021Article
- Patient reported outcomes in an elder-friendly surgical environment: Prospective, controlled before-after study.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2021Article
- Prediction of functional loss in emergency surgery is possible with a simple frailty screening tool.World journal of emergency surgery : WJES · 2021Article
- Clinical frailty and its effect on the septuagenarian population after emergency laparotomy.Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England · 2021Article
- Article
- Evolution of a Dedicated Emergency Surgery and Trauma (ESAT) unit over 3 years: sustained improved outcomes.European journal of trauma and emergency surgery : official publication of the European Trauma Society · 2020Article
- The statistical importance of P-POSSUM scores for predicting mortality after emergency laparotomy in geriatric patients.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2020Article
- Early Postoperative Death in Patients Undergoing Emergency High-Risk Surgery: Towards a Better Understanding of Patients for Whom Surgery May Not Be Beneficial.Journal of clinical medicine · 2020Article
- Clinical Effectiveness of the Elder-Friendly Approaches to the Surgical Environment Initiative in Emergency General Surgery.JAMA surgery · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Elderly patients frequently present with surgical emergencies to health care providers, and outcomes in this group of patients remain poor. Contributing factors include frailty, preexisting comorbidity, polypharmacy, delayed diagnosis, and lack of timely and consultant-led treatment. In this review, we address common emergency surgical presentations in the elderly and highlight the specific challenges in caring for these patients. We summarize 20 years of reports by various medical bodies that have aimed to improve the care of these patients. To improve morbidity and mortality, several aspects of care need to be addressed. These include accurate and timely preoperative assessment to identify treatable pathology and, where possible, to consider and correct age-specific disease processes. Identification of patients in whom treatment would be futile or associated with high risk is needed to avoid unnecessary interventions and to give patients and carers realistic expectations. The use of multidisciplinary teams to identify common postoperative complications and age-specific syndromes is paramount. Prevention of complications is preferable to rescue treatment due to the high proportion of patients who fail to recover from adverse events. Even with successful surgical treatment, long-term functional decline and increased dependency are common. More research into emergency surgery in the elderly is needed to improve care for this growing group of vulnerable patients.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.