A Clinical Study of Geriatric Anesthesia / 대한마취과학회지

ABSTRACT

It is widely believed that, compared with younger patients, elderly having surgery have a significantly high incidence of complications or death. So, we reviewed clinical records of 2094 patients aged over 65 out of 41,129 surgical cases performed at Catholic University Kang-Nam St. Mary Hospital from May 1980 to December 1989. The case were analysed statistically according to age, sex, department, preoperative physical status, operation site, anesthetic techniques and agents, duration of anesthesia, intraoperative transfusion, intraoperative complication, asaociated disease, postoperative complication and mor- tality. The results were as follows 1) Of the total 41, 129 cases, 2,094 cases (5.1%) were over 65 years of age consisting of 1,039 male (49.6%) and 1,055 female (50.4%). 2) The most common age group for geriatric anesthesia (1, 164 cases) was 65~70 years of age (55.6%). 3) The rate of elective and emergency surgery was 90.2% (1,889 cases) and 9.8% (205 caaes). 4) Among the 2,094 cases, 1.029 cases were general surgry (49.1%), 373 cases were orthopedic surgery (20.7%) 5) The number of upper abdominal surgery cases were 643 cases (30.7%) and the number of lower abdominal surgery cases 433 cases (20. 7%). 6) The duration of anesthesia was within 1 hour in 286 case (13.1%), 1~2 hours in 755 cases (36.1%), 2~3 hours in 516 cases (24.6%). 7) The technique of anesthesia was done under the general anesthesia for 1,445 cases (69.0%) and epidural anesthesia for 433 cases (20.7%). 8) The anesthetics were halothane for 631 cases (30.1%), enflurane for 435 cases (20.8%) and fentanyl for 364 eases (17.8%), lidocaine and bupivacaine mixture for 254 cases (12.1%). 9) Among the 2.094 cases, 1,471 cases had preoperative disease (70.3%), which of the most common disease (24.1%) was the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (545 cases). 10) The numbers of postoperative death were 40 cases (1.9%).