Should Your Parent Risk an Anesthesia Disaster or Forego Surgery?

Note: This is an older article so the types of anesthesia have (in some cases) changed. That said, it’s clear that undergoing a procedure that requires anesthesia should be a carefully made decision between a doctor and the patient (or caregiver), with full knowledge that the older people get the more risky it is to have surgery for any reason:

A reader asked me whether she should try to sway her mother, who had colon cancer, toward surgery. Her mother, 87, was diagnosed with colon cancer and given the choice of surgery and chemotherapy or letting it alone. If she chose not to have surgery, she could still have chemotherapy and radiation, though she was told that treatment wasn’t apt to help a great deal. As expected, the daughter was distraught. She was seeking help in determining what her responsibility to her mother is.

The woman mentioned that her mother was mentally sharp, so I told her that, in my opinion, her mother should be given all available information and then left to make her own decision. Barring advanced dementia or other mental issues, I feel elders should have the right to make informed decisions about their own health.

When sharing my personal opinion with this woman, I made it very clear that an informed decision includes information on what anesthetics can do to the aging body. Several studies have been done on the effects of anesthetics on the aging body; however, the one I often go back to was done by researcher Roderic Eckenhoff, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Eckenhoff was especially suspicious of one commonly used anesthetic, isoflurane, as a possible culprit in pushing some elders over the edge into dementia.

Continue reading about the risks of surgery and anesthesia on older adults:

Minding Our Elders: Caregivers Share Their Personal Stories. “For anyone having to walk the last segments of life with a loved one, read this.” …Delores

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