Today's USA Today greeted me with a story by Liz Szabo headlined, "Older Doctors Try To Keep Up."

The gist of the article is that older is not better when it comes to your doctor.

For example, in a 2000 study of heart attack victims, mortality rates rose 1% for every two years since a patient's doctor graduated from medical school.

The newspaper's story is based on the results of a new study reported in today's Annals of Internal Medicine.

Huh.

Should I hang up my stethoscope, I wonder?

As regards the practice of anesthesiology, the issue of knowledge v experience is a most interesting one.

Not only because an anesthesiologist's error can kill you, rather than simply keep you from getting better quite as quickly.

The way I look at it, I never knew more anesthesia-related information than on the day I took my oral anesthesiology board examination, way back in the early years of the last century.

But my experience now, after more than 25,000 anesthetics given (and still without ever having been sued, knock on wood), is immensely greater than when I was a board-certified smartypants-neophyte.

I can solve problems now without even having to think about them, because I've seen them before: recognition is 9/10 of remedy, is how I put it.

Very seldom does something new happen when I'm in the OR.

So, all things considered, I think a person is safer going under now with me at the anesthesia machine controls than back in the day.

But then, I'm sure I'll say the same thing when I'm walking into walls instead of through doorways.

Here's a link to USA Today story.