[Cardiac surgery in the octogenarian: what risks for what benefits?]

About 1 to 8% of patients referred for cardiac surgery in industrialised countries are octogenarians. Hospital mortality is high and depends on age, type of surgery and other predictors of death which are female gender, left congestive heart failure, history of myocardial infarction, chronic obstructive lung disease, renal insufficiency, carotid and others vascular diseases. Morbidity is also very high. Besides supraventricular arrhythmias, respiratory failure is the main cause (20 to 30%) of morbidity, followed by cerebrovascular accident and renal failure. Due to this high rate of postoperative events, the length of stay is significantly increased. At follow-up however, excellent functional status and survival rate is afforded by the operative procedure. The main problem remains the selection of patients in order to improve results.