London: A new report has suggested that UK's NHS may be discriminating between patients in terms of their age and where they live implying that age discrimination may be preventing older people from having access to vital forms of surgery.

Though NHS England said it was committed to "ensuring older patients had equal access to treatment", a report by the Royal College of GPs and Age UK that looked at surgery rates for six common procedures for the over 65s in England, found a wide variation in access to treatment depending on where people lived and a "worrying" difference between the over 65s and over 75s.

The report was quick to point out that the anomaly may be because of reasons such as the patient opting not to have treatment for example, but, it said the NHS still needed to investigate the findings.

The findings of the report were based on data for the removal of breast and colorectal tissue, removal of the gall bladder, hernia repairs, hip replacements and knee replacements in 2011-2012. It was found that there was a 37-fold difference in the rate of breast tissue removal for people with breast cancer who were aged over 65 based on where they live.

Despite the fact the need for the treatment increases with age, a 34 percent drop in gall bladder operations and a 16.5 percent drop in breast tissue removal was observed between the over 65s and over 75s.