Quality of life in elderly patients following thoracic aortic surgery

While early outcomes following thoracic aortic surgery are improving, the long-term quality of life in elderly patients following this procedure remains uncharacterized. Thus, the goal of this retrospective study was to investigate quality of life in elderly patients following thoracic aortic surgery in regard to age, urgency of operation, operative procedures, skin incision, selective cerebral perfusion (SCP) time, and cardiopulmonary bypass time.

One hundred-and-eleven surviving patients that underwent thoracic aortic surgery between 1987 and 1999 were enrolled in this study. The Short Form-36 (SF-36) health questionnaire was administered to all participants.

Some measures of quality of life were lower in those patients that underwent the procedure as compared to age- and gender-matched normal population. Quality of life (QOL) of the elderly patients with prolonged SCP time (>120 minutes) was significantly lower in the dimension of role-physical of SF-36. On the other hand, there was no significant difference between the subgroups in terms of urgency of operation, operative procedure, skin incision, and cardiopulmonary bypass time.

Physical and mental quality of life was significantly lower in elderly patients undergoing thoracic aortic surgery. Prolonged SCP time (>120 minutes) was a negative factor for long-term QOL. We advocate discussing the data with patients when obtaining informed consent for this procedure.