I suspect that there is no survey that asks whether a U.S. resident of a certain age has had at least one surgical procedure in his or her lifetime by the time of the survey. Is there somewhere I can order a survey with this question?
IPUMS does not disseminate any survey that contains a single variable that reports if the respondent has ever had a surgical procedure. Within IPUMS Health Surveys, the National Health Interview Survey does have a few relevant surgical variables, including: SURGERYR (Ever had surgery, past 12 months (available 1997-2018)). Some other relevant variables that can be found by searching “surgery” in IPUMS NHIS include; CATARACTSURG (Ever had cataract surgery (available 1984, 2008, 2016-2017, 2023) and SURGERYNO (Total number of surgeries in past 12 months (available: 1997-2011, 2015-2018). IPUMS is not associated with the following databases, but you may consider looking into the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, which provides access (at a cost) to the Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample and State Ambulatory Surgery and Services Databases. Questions regarding those data should be directed to the data provider AHRQ.