[Cardiac surgery in the elderly].

Cardiac disease in the elderly represents a major burden on public healthcare. Their frequences is linked to ageing process of general population and prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in older ages. Two diseases are of primary importance in elderly: Aortic valve stenosis is the most common. Valve replacement is the procedure of choice in the majority of patients. In coronary artery disease, although drug eluting stents have improved the results of percutaneous coronary intervention, coronary artery bypass grafts have still has an important place in the treatment of severe lesions: multivessel disease, left main and diabetes. Our report is a retrospective review of 8871 patients aged 70 years or more operated on between 1974 and 2004.