Barbara Walters to have heart valve surgery

Strange that you say that, to me she looks the same as always but older. I do think she looks great for her age though. my daughter and I were joking about that Hef should date someone his own age. We were trying to think of good looking women who would fit the bill and she was the hottest 80 yr old woman we could think of.

I think she changed her entire aura when she got her new face. I don't hear her anymore. I just see her and am puzzled to understand why so many do this. They don't look younger, they look rubbery and silly.

To me she looks like Cher, Joan Rivers, Olivia Newton John, Melanie Griffen etc. It is as if after a certain age these women go to the plastic surgeon and say "Ok, it's time" and they give them 'the face'.

Why don't they come up with a variation on that face so they don't all look slightly related. It is very sad to me that she felt the need to do this.

It's not just women doing it. There's an "American Man Face" now, too. All the men wind up looking like odd man-women, or like plastic dolls.

Burt Reynolds, Kenny Rogers, Bruce Jenner, Smokey Robinson all come to mind as men who look horrible after getting their faces done!

Go back & look at some photos of her in the mid-to-late 70's. She looked old back then and was really only in her 40's. She's had a lot of work done (on her face) in the years since then. If I made my living in front of the cameras, I can't say that I blame her. She is the same age as my Mom so I hope she does well w/the surgery.

But what I don't get is that the people who see her "in front of the cameras" still know that she is 80 but now looks like a droid instead of a woman of intelligence who ages gracefully.

It made me lose respect for her to know that she was that shallow. No one watching media personalities would rather see a droid than an older woman would they?

Here she is in 1976 - Looks like the same face to me.(but older - she definitely looks like she aged in 34 yrs)

http://www.whosdatedwho.com/topic/7996/barbara-walters-people-magazine-11-october-1976.htm

Thanks for providing the link/photo. That is a flattering photo if I remember the other photos correctly. I was a teenager back then but do remember her looking every bit her 40-something years and even older than the average 40-something back then. She was on TV Guide several times that I can recall. She has likely had more than one face lift too. I see nothing wrong with a woman trying to enhance her looks with a face lift. I would like one of those Lifestyle Lifts myself. What I think looks bad is when people get so much plastic surgery to where they don't look human anymore (Joan Rivers, Michael Jackson, etc.) Come to think of it, Michael Jackson got so he didn't look like a real person on any level. He was so good looking about 20 years or so ago.

Wow, such profound disinformation.

Well, actually, doctors have always taken into consideration the ability of older patients to heal, quality of life and so on.

A great example is the Michael deBakey case. He was a world-renowned cardiac surgeon. He actually, ironically, devised the treatment and classification system for aortic-dissections (typically a rather fatal issue).

He suffered an aortic dissection when he was 97 years old. The Ethics Committee of the hospital had to approve such a case. He was (probably still is) the oldest person ever to receive the deBakey procedure. Plus he initially resisted the option, but that might have been a standard clause on admission.

The decision didn't then and will not in the future, be predicated on future contributions.

The standards for triaging and admitting heart-valve replacement surgery would never be prescribe aspirin and send home. She was diagnosed long ago.

And she obviously has sufficient personal or insurance-provided funds to cover the surgery. Otherwise the diagnosis and recommended regimen of treatment would have been very different. There was a time when an informed person wouldn't use the word "ethics" and "attorney" in the same sentence. Unfortunately, that rule now also applies equally to most doctors.

Just keep on making stuff up, Leon.

Please . . . not mad at you or anyone. We all know that any person sincerely concerned about other people would be out somewhere making a difference instead of here in a commentary venue wasting their precious time and inviting insults from other people with nothing better to do.