No abstract

Decisions on whether people gain access to surgery must not be based on outdated assumptions of age and fitness – instead, a person's overall health (or 'biological age') must be the main consideration. These are the findings of a comprehensive new study, Access all ages: Assessing the impact of age on access to surgical treatment, published by the RCS, Age UK and MHP Health Mandate, which examines the patterns of surgical treatment in relation to age across eight areas of surgery.

Easy listening music in the operating theatre could reduce anxiety for millions of patients undergoing operations using local anaesthetic each year, according to research. This is just one of the surgical news stories that captured the media's imagination last month. Surgeons from the plastic and reconstructive department at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford measured the respiratory rates of emergency patients and asked them to rate their feelings of worry. Half the patients had their operation in a theatre with music playing and half without -the group who were exposed to music reported lower levels of anxiety and had a lower breathing rate.