[Early postoperative complications in patients with aneurysm of the abdominal aorta treated with vascular prosthesis]

Type and frequency of early postoperative complications were analyzed in a group of 226 patients (190 men and 36 women) at the age of 45 to 83 (mean age 65.3 +/- 8.2) who were operated as planned due to aneurysm of abdominal part of aorta. Patients were divided into two groups (I and II) depending on method of analgesia. Group I which constituted 173 patients operated at associated general and extrameningeal analgesia and group II constituted 53 patients operated at general analgesia. The division into groups was unintentional and was due to the fact that general analgesia was carried out in patients with contraindication of extrameningeal catheter use or technical troubles with its appliance. Patients of both groups were divided into groups (A and B) depending on type of complication or cause of death (A--cardiogenic, B--extracardiac). The followed up group is characterized by increased incidence in men than in women (5:1), the age of both sexes is not significantly different respectively men and women 65.5 and 65.2 years. In most cases, patients suffered from arterial hypertension (20.4%), ischaemic heart disease and myocardial infarction (21.2%) and chronic obstructive lung disease (12%). Early postoperative complications without lethal outcome occurred in 76 patients (33.6%), in 7.5% they included cardiogenic complications, while in 26% extracardiac complications, among which acute ischaemia of lower extremities (8.8%) and postoperative pulmonary complications (5.7%) were the most dominating. The observed group is characterized by relatively high postoperative mortality (9.3%). 4% of patients died due to cardiogenic reasons, while 5.3% of patients died due to extracardiac reasons. The most common cause of death in the last group was infection and embolism of mesentery (3.6%). Strong relation between preoperative loading, operation time, time of aorta occlusion, type of grafted prosthesis and frequency as well as type of postoperative complications was confirmed. The relationship was not confirmed with respect to the type of analgesia.