[Prevention and treatment of perioperative non-surgery-related complications in elderly patients with gastric cancer].

The incidence of elderly gastric cancer patients is increasing, since the average life span is longer than ever before and the medical management is improved. Elderly patients usually have more comorbidities due to gradual loss of immunonutritional and functional status, leading to a higher rate of non-surgery-related postoperative morbidity and mortality. Along with the development of surgical and nursing technique, more and more surgeons would perform surgical procedures on elderly gastric cancer patients without hesitation. Moreover, recent studies showed that surgery would be an effective way to improve the prognosis of elderly gastric cancer patients, while the surgery-related complications were not increased significantly. Therefore, it is important to elucidate some specific issues of prevention and treatment of postoperative non-surgery-related complications in elderly gastric cancer patients. The topic of this review will cover coronary complications, pulmonary complications, nutrition-related complications, and some other postoperative issues.