The Aging Surgeon ---and Dentist---

Dr. Mark Katlic

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Surgeons, dentists, and other procedural specialists face the same inexorable decline in physical and cognitive function as all aging humans. Although the vast majority of these specialists are excellent, a few are not. The public believes that we, as professionals, police ourselves but this is illusory. Mandatory retirement at a certain age, as exists in some countries and for some professions, is inappropriate due to the vast variability in function among individuals, variability which actually increases with increasing age. Options for dealing with this issue include the Aging Surgeon Program at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore and Late Career Practitioner Policies, the latter applicable to institutions, credentialing boards, and practices. These options balance patient safety and liability risk with the dignity of a committed specialist and his or her value to society.

Dr. Katlic is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington and Jefferson College and an Alpha Omega Alpha graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed residencies in Surgery and Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital. A practicing thoracic surgeon since 1984, Dr. Katlic also earned a Master of Medical Management degree from the John Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University in 1999.

Dr. Katlic has had a special interest in caring for the elderly for over 40 years. His paper, “Surgery in Centenarians,” was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1985 and he went on to publish seven textbooks and to lecture frequently on this subject. As a thoracic surgeon Dr. Katlic has pioneered video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) under local anesthesia and sedation, with results of 576 cases published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

Dr. Katlic is presently Chair Emeritus of the Department of Surgery at LifeBridge Health System in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2014 Dr. Katlic established The Aging Surgeon Program, a comprehensive, objective evaluation of a surgeon’s cognitive and physical faculties, at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, a program that he still directs. He was named Maryland Innovator of the Year in 2013 and Maryland Physician of the Year in 2019; he received the Maryland Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. In his free time, he trains for triathlons and writes. His first novel, Thorax, was published in 2024.

Educational Objectives
1. Understand why the aging surgeon/dentist is a potential problem
2. Discuss why a mandatory retirement age is not an answer to the problem
3. Present existing options for evaluating an aging surgeon/dentist
4. Understand elements of a structured aging surgeon program and late career practitioner policy

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