Spinal disease in the aged.

Treatment of the diseased spine in the elderly is a difficult challenge for the practitioner. Spinal surgery for this population requires specialized surgical skills. Patient evaluation, nonoperative treatment, surgical indications, surgical techniques, and postoperative management involve unique considerations. The patient's functional expectations, general medical condition, and proposed benefits from surgery must be addressed before any surgical intervention. Spinal surgery for the aged requires the orthopaedic surgeon to consider this patient as more than just an older individual and demands that the entire perioperative milieu be examined and its issues resolved. The projected data on aging of the United States population make this issue increasingly important.