Surgery is taxing on the body - that should be obvious

Surgery is very taxing on your body. Think about it. You are injected with a poison. This shuts down your brain, so much so that you are no longer "awake". Then you get sliced and diced, cut and sown up. Then you typically get another batch of poisons to take regularly. Things like pain killers, anti inflammatory etc.

All this is good, you live longer because of it. I didn't suffocate from a collapsed lung, Tiffany, my wife, walks properly after a surgical reconstitution of a smashed ankle. My dad didn't die from appendicitis. These are all good things. However in focusing on the positive we can forget how stressful surgery can be on the body. When we are young this isn't as much of a problem as aged persons.

Here in Huntly a year or so ago a retied man and husband who went in for a knee replacement, came out with a stroke and died within a few weeks. And it isn't uncommon for elderly who have surgery to become a tipping point after which they never really regain full health (the same happens with falls and other sickness with elderly).

It is great to see that a national newspaper has picked this up. In elderly 1 in 20 will die as a result of the surgery and 1 in 5 will have a major complication. These types of statistics calls into the question of having surgery in senior years. For some it would be better not to have the surgery. Something to consider when deciding if you, or an elderly loved one, is weighing up the risks and benefits of surgery.