[The results of a program of preoperative hospital assessment of geriatric patients].

In order to illustrate the possibilities that offers the specialized geriatric evaluation during the preoperative period of elderly patients in a general hospital, the results obtained throughout two years are presented and compared, according to preestablished design, in 551 urological patients (U) (age: 75.4 years) and 597 traumatological patients (T) (age: 79 years), all of them over 65 years old. The more frequent interventions were hip fractures (88% of T), prostatic adenoma and vesical urothelioma (42 and 27% of U). Only in 10% of T and 18% of U, we did not observed related problems. The most frequent of these were cardiovascular, neuropsychiatric and respiratory problems, especially in group T. Some kind of recommendations were given in 88% of T and 80% of U. The average period in taking care of these inter-consultations was 1.3 days and the number of perioperative visits was 2.4. In 42% of T and 74% of U, we did not observe psychical discapacities. The average surgical risk measured by the ASA was grade III or IV in 22% of T and 12% of U, similar figures than the ones of the cardiac risk (Goldman). We believe that this type of specialized evaluation is more comprehensive and renders important benefits both for the elderly patients and for the surgeon, when compared with the traditional system of preoperative evaluation.