[Complications after tracheal cicatricial stenosis surgery]

A total of 323 patients (195 males and 128 females) were treated at the Russian Surgery Research Center, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in 1963 to January 2001. They underwent 692 surgical or endoscopic interventions. Surgical treatment included circular tracheal resection and stepwise T-tube tracheal plastic repair. Three hundred and three patients were discharged, 20 patients died. Hospital mortality was 6.6%. Poor postoperative outcomes and intraoperative complications were noted after 93 (13.4%) interventions. The causes of death were bleeding in 5 patients, respiratory failure in 4, tracheal rupture at bougienage in 3, intraoperative vascular damage in 3, posthypoxic brain edema in 2, thrombotic embolism in 2, and total bronchospasm after tracheal endoscopic bougienage. Care to patients with cicatricial tracheal stenosis is frequently fraught with a risk and requires competence under the conditions of a specialized hospital. The most dangerous complications are those due to anastomotic incompetence, mediastinitis, bleeding, aspiration pneumonia, and respiratory failure.