University of Washington researchers say that as we age, our risk for complications from surgery increases. That doesn't have to be the case, so long as you prepare and recover from surgery the right way.

Many moons ago (well, really only two years but it seems like a long time ago), I wrote an article about surgery and the importance of going into it with your eyes wide open.  In other words, going into the surgery firm in the knowledge that the surgery is absolutely necessary and going into the surgery mentally and physically prepared for the toll it puts on the body.

If you haven’t read it, do so, because what you don’t know can hurt you.

I say that because according to a new report published in the December issue of Archives of Surgery, the older a person is, the more likely it is that that person will have serious health complications in the aftermath.

Researchers from the University of Washington’s School of Medicine reviewed the paperwork of over 101,000 people that had abdominal surgeries performed on them between 1987 and 2004.  All of the procedures were done on people over the age of 65.  Oh, and all of the surgeries performed were necessary procedures (e.g. hysterectomies, cholecystectomies, colectomies) not elective abdominal surgical procedures like bariatric surgery, for example.

What they were really looking for in these procedures was not what kind of surgery that was performed or how long they took, but if any complications arose.  For the most part, they didn’t, but when they did arise, they tended to be in the elder years (90 and over) rather than the “early” years (65-69).

For example, for people in the 65-69 age bracket, the likelihood that they’d have health complications 90 days after the surgery was 14 percent.  But in people 90 and over, the complication rate was about 23 percent.  That’s almost one in four!  For every four-year age bracket, the risk of complication increased about 1.5 percent.

While the death rate was not as high as the complication rate, risk assessment was again a function of age (65-69 years = 9 percent; 90 and older = 17 percent).

Researchers think this link is due to the elderly not being able to recover as quickly from surgery as those younger than them.  But they also say that it’s a function of their inability to adapt to the stress of surgery.

I can almost guarantee you that the death and complication rate would have been much lower had they been better prepared for it.  In short, prepared in a way that I outlined just two years ago:  with the proper nutrients and foods pre-surgery, the proper nutrients and foods post-surgery, and hypnotherapy to increase healing.

If you or someone you love is in their latter years and is preparing for surgery, please pass along this column of mine to them.  It could very well wind up saving their life.

Source:
sciencedaily.com

In recent years, the popularity of stomach surgeries has risen among adults going from 12,775 to 70,256 surgeries in the U.S. from 1998 to 2002 according to the monthly Archives of Surgery journal. That number has now increased to more than 120,000 a year.

According to federal statistics only 350 children in America had operations such as these in 2004. Doctors have been hesitant to perform the surgeries for a few reasons: First off, most stomach surgeries involve making the stomach smaller by cutting it. Procedures such as these put developing children at risk. In fact, the death rate among children who have this surgery performed on them is around 1 in 50, which is twice as much as adults who have bariatric surgery.

Aside from that, in 2004 childhood obesity was not nearly as prevalent in American society compared to today. Along with the gain in weight, there’s also been a gain in interest for these types of operations.

This is pretty disappointing actually. What happened to the days of actually working to achieve a result?

The sad but true fact is that we live in a society today that revolves around instant gratification. No one is willing to invest the time, discipline & diligence to get to where they want to be.

The problem is that it’s now at a point that people are actually risking their lives to avoid a little good old fashioned work.

I’ll tell you this much. If it was my child that was overweight, surgery would not even be an option. Things like a healthy diet and a good exercise regimen would do just fine. In the end, these things would improve my child’s quality of life rather than putting it at risk.

And just because everything goes as planned during her surgery, it doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods just yet. In July, the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reported that 40 percent of weight-loss surgery patients develop problematic complications within six months following the surgery.

In the end, you’re better off taking a closer look at your child’s health regimen. Plus, you can take the $30,000 that the hospital stay and surgery would have ran you and put it toward your child’s education.