How serious is a bowel obstruction (especially for an 83 yr/old female)?!

How serious is a bowel obstruction (especially for an 83 yr/old female)?

4 weeks ago
Pt is already hospitalized w/ surgery scheduled asap, just wondered how serious this can be

It depends partly on how her health is otherwise. If she has bad heart/lung disease, surgery will be a more risky endeavour, and the chances of complication will be greater. If she is otherwise pretty healthy, she will most likely do pretty well following surgery. The cause of the obstruction is also important. Usually it is from scarring from previous abdominal surgery, but if she has never had prior abdominal surgery it is more worrisome. This is because it increases the likelihood of more serious things like cancer causing the obstruction. The fact that surgery is planned and not emergent is a good sign. A dreaded complication of an obstruction would be a perforation; if this were to happen she would appear much sicker and surgery would likely be emergent. In an older patient, a bowel obstruction is more dangerous than if she was younger, but with appropriate surgical intervention she will likely do just fine in the long run.