• Provides practical advice to help the practitioner deal with elderly patients due to undergo surgery
• Outlines the basic principles and major clinical issues facing the clinician and aims to alleviate these problems
• Features "Key Points" at the beginning of each chapter to summarise the information available
• Contains illustrations to help demonstrate the key practical points

Readership: Consultant anaesthetists, trainees in anaesthesia, anaesthetic nurses, operating department practitioners, elderly care physicians and surgical ward nurses.

Chris Dodds, Professor of Anaesthesia and Consultant Anaesthetist, James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, UK, Chandra Kumar, Professor of Anaesthesia and Consultant Anaesthesist, James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, UK, and Frederique Servin, Consultant Anaesthesist, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Bichat-Claude Bernard, Paris

1: Definitions, social trends and epidemiology
2: Pathophysiology of aging and their relevance to anaesthesia
3: Anaesthetic pharmacology in the elderly
4: Preoperative assessment and preparation of elderly patients undergoing major surgery
5: Day case anaesthesia in the elderly
6: Emergency anaesthesia in the elderly
7: Anaesthesia for orthopaedic surgery in the elderly
8: Anaesthesia for major abdominal surgery in the elderly
9: Neurosurgery in the elderly
10: Urological and gynaecological surgery in the elderly
11: Post-operative care and analgesia
12: Intensive care and the elderly
13: Cognitive dysfunction and sleep disorders
14: Ethics and the law involving elderly