When Hazel Homer was 99, more than one doctor advised that there was little to be done about her failing heart except wait for it to fail a final time. But Mrs. Homer was not interested in waiting to die of what many would call old age. Now, at 104, her heart is still ticking, thanks to a specialized pacemaker and defibrillator that synchronizes her heartbeat and can administer a slight shock to revive her if her heart falters. Her operation, a month before her 100th birthday, reflects what some doctors are hailing as a new frontier in medicine: successful surgery for centenarians. But others say that such aggressive treatment for what are euphemistically known as the late elderly can be wasteful and barbaric, warning that the rush to test the limits of technology can give patients false hope and compound their health challenges with surgical complications. “She’s just a peek into the future,” said Dr. Steven M. Greenberg, a Long Island cardiologist who performed Mrs. Homer’s surgery, for which the average Medicare reimbursement at the time was $35,000. Data is hard to come by, since people over 75 are scarcely represented in clinical trials, but several geriatricians said that procedures that two decades ago were seldom considered for people in their 90s are now increasingly commonplace. They include hip and knee replacement, cataract surgery, heart valve replacement, bypass operations, pacemaker implantation and treatment for slow-growing cancers that afflict areas like the prostate.
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