Surgery near end of life common, debilitating for older patients
Overtreatment is a common problem across the U.S. healthcare system but can be especially problematic for older patients who may take longer to heal and lack the physical and mental resilience of younger people.
According to Kaiser Health News, patients who undergo surgery in their final year of life spend 50 percent more time in the hospital than peers who don’t receive surgery and almost twice as many days in intensive care units. At some point, experts say, quality of life must be taken into account and interventions should take a back seat.
Yet, almost one-third of Medicare patients undergo an operation within a year of death, according to KHN.
“We have a culture that believes in very aggressive care,” said Rita Redberg, MD, MSc, a cardiologist at UC San Francisco. “We are often not considering the chance of benefit and chance of harm, and how that changes when you get older. We also fail to have conversations about what patients value most.”
Without these honest conversations, older patients are likely to go along with physicians’ recommendations out of respect for the medical profession. But with fee-for-service payment models still active in the U.S., providers are financially incentivized to perform more procedures.
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Daniel joined TriMed’s Chicago editorial team in 2017 as a Cardiovascular Business writer. He previously worked as a writer for daily newspapers in North Dakota and Indiana.