I'll back up again. As these systems age, there is wear internally in the compressor, there can be degradation of the lubricant, seals fail and people put gosh knows what into the system, etc.
You would hope the lubricant would be pristine and nondegraded, but that isnt always the case.
IMO, if you are dealing with a case that might be near "black death", and you want the repair to last, you need to flush out the contaminated lubricant (whether or not you are upgrading to another refrigerant type).
Some pretty nasty mess can come out of an aging system.