Summary
NEW ORLEANS - Eighty-year-olds with clogged arteries or leaky heart valves used to be sent home with a pat on the arm from their doctors and pills to try to ease their symptoms. Now more are getting open-heart surgery, with remarkable survival rates rivaling those of much younger people, new studies show.
Years ago, physicians "were told we were pushing the envelope" to operate on a 70-year-old, said Dr. Vincent Bufalino, a cardiologist at Loyola University in Chicago. But today "we have elderly folks who are extremely viable, mentally quite sharp," who want to decide for themselves whether to take the risk, he said.See the full content of this document
Extract
More Elderly Patients Get Heart Surgery
Even 90-year-olds are having open-heart surgery, said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a Yale University cardiologist who has researched older heart patients.
"Age itself shouldn't be ...See the full content of this document
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