Doctors question if we're operating on the old too often
(NEWSER) - Elderly patients are stunningly likely to have surgery in the last year, month, or even week of their lives, according to a new study from Harvard researchers, who looked at 1.8 million Medicare recipients over the age of 65 who died in 2008. According to publicly available records, nearly 1 in 3 of them had surgery in the year before death, nearly 1 in 5 in the month before, and nearly 1 in 10 in the week before, numbers far higher than researchers had expected, the New York Times reports. More»
