Perioperative assessment at the BGS Autumn Meeting

Dr Jugdeep Dhesi is Chair of the BGS Perioperative Care of Older People Ungergoing Surgery SIG (POPS) and is consultant physician and clinical lead for the POPS service at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals. She will be Chairing the POPS Session at the BGS Autumn Meeting.

Older surgical patients are presenting us geriatricians with challenges. How should geriatric medicine fit into the national agenda for perioperative medicine? Which models of care work best in improving outcomes for this complex multimorbid group of patients? Do different surgical subspecialties require different approaches? How should these services differ between the district general and teaching hospital? Should elective and emergency older surgical patients be given equivalent geriatric medicine input? How can we balance the frequent calls to involve geriatricians in the care of older surgical patients against the numerous unfilled consultant posts in ‘traditional’ geriatric medicine that already exist? These issues will be explored in the POPS SIG session at the BGS meeting in Glasgow (Friday 25th November).

Jude Partridge will be focussing on a single sub-specialty of older patients; vascular surgery. The increasing numbers of older patients presenting for vascular surgery are a complex group; frailty, cognitive impairment and multimorbidity are common. Furthermore the move to operating in hub centres can make discharging patients after surgery even more involved. This talk will highlight these issues and describe the challenges and benefits of collaborative vascular surgeon/geriatrician team working.

Arturo Vilches-Moraga from Salford will be describing the setting up and evaluation of a proactive comprehensive multidisciplinary service for older adults admitted as an emergency under general surgery. In particular this talk will explore different models of care, sharing the experience at Salford Royal in comparison with the experiences from Guys and St Thomas’. The speaker will consider opportunities to engage with colleagues across the UK with the aim of achieving a final objective: improving the clinical outcomes and quality of life in older surgical patients.

Jason Cross will be exploring how we might approach the workforce challenges we face. If we are to address the service needs across the country we will need to be creative in workforce planning and utilisation. This talk will discuss alternatives to the traditional consultant geriatrician delivered models of care, giving examples in practice, and advice on how to develop the specialist nurse liaison role.

And finally Ramani Moonesinghe, will be discussing how we can ensure collaborative working between surgeons, anaesthetists and physicians to improve quality and outcomes for older surgical patients. She will be drawing on her experience as a practising intensivist and anaesthetist, as director for the National Institute of Academic Anaesthesia's Health Services Research Centre and as associate National Clinical Director for Elective Care at NHS England.