This open access book on Geriatric Surgery is an invaluable resource for healthcare professionals managing elderly surgical patients. It provides essential guidance to improve patient outcomes, optimize surgical decision-making, and enhance perioperative care. Older adults often have multiple comorbidities, altered physiological responses, and increased surgical risks. This manual equips surgeons and clinicians with evidence-based protocols to minimize complications such as infections, delirium, and poor wound healing. It also highlights best practices in prehabilitation, anesthesia considerations, and postoperative recovery strategies tailored to elderly patients.
Surgical decision-making in geriatric patients is complex due to factors like frailty, cognitive impairment, and life expectancy. This well-structured manual outlines risk assessment models, such as the Frailty Index and Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA), ensuring a patient-centered approach that balances surgical benefits against potential risks. Modern geriatric surgery relies on collaboration between surgeons, anesthesiologists, geriatricians, physiotherapists, and dietitians. Our manual facilitates this teamwork by providing integrated care pathways, nutritional guidelines, and rehabilitation protocols to improve recovery and reduce hospital stays.
For medical trainees and general surgeons, this geriatric surgery manual serves as an educational tool to understand the unique challenges of operating on older adults. It includes case studies, clinical algorithms, and practical recommendations that enhance their skills and decision-making abilities. By implementing best practices, hospitals can reduce complications, ICU admissions, and readmissions, ultimately cutting healthcare costs while improving patient quality of life. In summary, this geriatric surgery manual is crucial in providing structured, evidence-based guidance for optimizing surgical care in older adults, leading to better outcomes and more efficient healthcare delivery.
Fausto Catena is Associate Professor of General Surgery at the University of Bologna. His activity focuses on the following pathologies: inguinal hernia, colorectal cancer, laparocele, diverticulitis, abdominal diastasis, ulcerative colitis. He is professionally dedicated to the following specialist areas: proctology emergency and trauma surgery, oncological surgery, sarcoma and carcinosis surgery, minimally invasive surgery, colo-rectal surgery, kidney transplantation, and abdominal wall surgery. He performed more than 4500 medium-high level surgical procedures.
He is Editor in Chief of the World Journal of Emergency Surgery, Editor of other 30 Journals and Member of the Committee on Publication Ethics. Prof. Catena was an invited speaker or chairman in approximately 300 national and international Congress. He is General Secretary of the World Society of Emergency Surgery, General Secretary of the Italian Society of Surgical Physiopathology, President Elect of the Italian Society of Geriatric Surgery, past Member of the Executive Committee of the Italian Society of Digestive Pathology and Past President of ESYS- European College of Surgeons- Italian Chapter. Since 2012 he has been Fellow of Royal College of Surgeons UK. Prof Catena is a world-renowned opinion leader in emergency surgery: he wrote all the WSES guidelines-position papers in this scientific field; he has been included in the list of Top Scientists Stanford University. He wrote more than 1000 scientific papers, (more than 500 on pubmed, H-index = 71), 50 book chapters and 10 Books. Prof. Catena won 25 national and international scientific prizes.
Dr. Paolo Carcoforo, full professor of Surgery since 2016, is a highly accomplished surgeon and academic who completed his specialization in General Surgery with honors in 1991 and in Vascular Surgery with honors in 1997, and has been a member of the New York Academy of Sciences since 1999. He has held several significant institutional roles, including Director of the Departmental Research Center for Intraoperative Radioguided and Radioimmunoguided Diagnosis and Treatment of Tumors from 2005 to 2009, Director of the Research Center for Pelvic Floor Disorders since 2022, and Director of the Residency Program in General Surgery since 2018. In 2024 he became President of the Italian Society of Geriatric Surgery (SICG) and he has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Italian Society of Surgery (SIC) for the 2025–2028 term. As a professor at the University of Ferrara, he teaches General Surgery in the MD program and contributes to the training of students in Nursing, Radiologic Technology, and multiple residency programs, including General Surgery, Vascular Surgery, Orthopedics, Gynecology and Obstetrics, Pediatrics, Oncology, Dermatology, and Venereology. Clinically, he serves as Director of the Complex Operative Unit of Surgery 2 and of the Breast Surgery Unit at the University Hospital of Ferrara, with expertise in breast cancer, thyroid cancer, melanoma, and the surgical management of onco-hematologic patients, having performed over 16,000 certified surgical procedures since 1993. His scientific activity includes contributions to 10 academic textbooks, leadership in 10 research programs, participation in 33 projects (many of which multicenter and international), more than 200 conference presentations, 305 peer-reviewed publications with over 4,000 citations and an H-index of 38, and multiple awards and research grants, including funding from AIRC, the Italian League Against Cancer, and the Italian Ministry of Health.
