PATIENT CARE IN GERIATRIC SURGERY

Like the general trend in the world, the elderly population is increasing in our country. it is estimated that half of the patients in the elderly group had surgical intervention because of any reason before their death. despite this; elderly can tolerate the surgical treatment less, because of the changes in cellular level and organ systems during ageing. nonetheless, increasing age causes the life span due to the disease to decrease and the surgical morbidity and mortality to increase. in addition, there are some physiological and psychosocial changes caused by the getting old process. for this reason, the elderly patients who are going to have surgery have different care needs compared to the care given to the young and middle-aged patients. in this article, risk factors of geriatric surgery, nursing care activities of geriatric surgery patients and rehabilitation of geriatric surgery patients are discussed.