I have had good experiences only after putting in a lot of research (that too after some painful lessons). And thats an option if it's not an emergency.
I have had to deal with a couple emergencies over the last couple years, where decisions had to be taken quickly. And I have seen both good and bad outcomes. The bad outcomes almost always are some guy at the ER acting as if palliative care is some unimaginable option.
They frame it simplistically "We have to move patient to the OR or they will be dead in X hours/by tomorrow etc". Just because it's possible to operate doesn't mean a surgery has to happen. Especially on elderly people.
It creates all kinds of cascading problems if it's a bad call. Good outcomes are possible but it needs a certain personality type and experience.
This is an extraordinary assertion. Having watched my two elderly parents getting excellent -almost loving - care from surgeons on the NHS, I find it quite an offensive one. In both cases they sat down and spent quite a lot of time going through the pros and cons of surgery at at their advanced age. Dad decided to go ahead with a particularly ticklish piece of back surgery which gave him another 7 years of mobility and independence, even though it wasn’t fully successful.
I’m sorry that you had such an appalling experience. It’s not universal.
The stats you ask for are freely available in the NHS. The surgeon carried out the procedure on dad, knowing full well that it could quite possibly worsen his mortality figures.