Delivering Perioperative Care for Older Patients Undergoing Cancer Surgery

Optimal management for older people with cancer undergoing surgery is complex. It requires knowledge across surgery, oncology, anesthesiology, and perioperative medicine geriatric medicine applied to individual patients throughout the perioperative journey, from contemplation of surgery through to recovery. Furthermore, delivering optimal care to this increasingly numerous population requires a multidisciplinary approach, with the patient at the center and specialties and disciplines contributing throughout the pathway at appropriate points in time. Developing and mobilizing the necessary knowledge to innovate and evaluate new models of care needs an evidence base specific to older people and a strategy for developing the workforce through cross and inter specialty and interdisciplinary education and training, in addition to organizational support and financial incentives for establishing new models of care for the older surgical cancer population.