New National Perioperative Guideline for the Delivery of Quality Care for Geriatric Surgical Patient
Responding to the needs of the country’s growing older adult population, a new collaborative best practices guideline was released today for optimal care of older adults immediately before, during, and after surgical operations (a timeframe known as the “perioperative” period). The new consensus-based guideline was developed by the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) and the American Geriatrics Society’s (AGS) Geriatrics-for- Specialists Initiative (GSI), with support from The John A. Hartford Foundation. With more than 40 million older adults living in the U.S. today—and with that number expected to nearly double to 89 million by 2050—providing expert guidance on surgical care is key since the need for surgical services increases with age and targeted guidance during the perioperative period can speed recovery.
Responding to the needs of the country’s growing older adult population, a new collaborative best practices guideline was released today for optimal care of older adults immediately before, during, and after surgical operations (a timeframe known as the “perioperative” period). The new consensus-based guideline was developed by the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) and the American Geriatrics Society’s (AGS) Geriatrics-for- Specialists Initiative (GSI), with support from The John A. Hartford Foundation. With more than 40 million older adults living in the U.S. today—and with that number expected to nearly double to 89 million by 2050—providing expert guidance on surgical care is key since the need for surgical services increases with age and targeted guidance during the perioperative period can speed recovery.
“Optimal Perioperative Management of the Geriatric Patient: A Best Practices Guideline” from the ACS and the AGS has been published online on the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS) website and will appear in print editions of JACS and the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society later this year. A free standing volume of this perioperative guideline has also been released today in tandem with publication in JACS, and is available for download here.
Building on a successful collaboration in 2012 on joint guidelines addressing the preoperative care of older patients before admittance to a hospital or surgery center, the ACS and the AGS once again partnered with The John A. Hartford Foundation in the development of this new best practices guideline examining the next phase of surgical care.
The new guideline addresses the perioperative care of all surgical patients 65-years-old and older as defined by Medicare regulations. The guideline provides a framework for thinking about the complex issues these patients face since they are more prone to experience postoperative complications and prolonged recovery with advanced age. The ACS Geriatric Surgery Task Force developed the guideline with an expert multidisciplinary panel, which evaluated current evidence and best practices in the medical literature to arrive at a set of expert recommendations targeting surgeons, anesthesiologists, and allied healthcare professionals who work with older adults. While this consensus-based guideline is “not a substitute for clinical judgment and experience,” the authors explain, it can do much to support tailored, comprehensive geriatrics evaluations.
This guideline was developed by the ACS Geriatric Surgery Task Force, formed in 2004. Further work of the task force, a joint effort of the ACS and the AGS supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation, led to a 2015 ACS-John A. Hartford Foundation initiative, The Coalition for Quality in Geriatric Surgery Project, which includes the AGS as a stakeholder organization. The CQGS Project aims to launch a broad-reaching quality program designed to systematically improve care and outcomes for the older adult surgical patient in 2019.
Read the full press release here.
