[Erroneous laparotomy in emergency surgery]

The authors studied the data concerning 101 patients who had undergone erroneous laparotomy for suspected acute surgical disease; these accounted for 0.4% of all the patients who were operated on for emergency indications in the same period. Eleven patients died. The operation was undertaken for an erroneous diagnosis of acute appendicitis (32 patients), acute cholecystitis (18), perforating gastric ulcer (15), peritonitis of unknown etiology (14), acute intestinal obstruction (5), strangulated hernia (3), destructive pancreatitis (3), tumor of the large intestine complicated by obstruction (3), abdominal abscess (2), thrombosis of the mesenteric vessels (1), ovarian apoplexy (1), closed abdominal trauma with injury to the viscera (4 patients). Diseases simulating the clinical picture of "acute abdomen" but not requiring an emergency operation were as follows: female reproductive (20 patients), pancreatic (11), renal diseases (11), hepatitis, cirrhosis of the liver (10), cardiovascular (9), pulmonary diseases (5), mesoadenitis (5), Crohn's disease (3), chronic colitis (3), carcinomatosis of the peritoneum (3), herpes zoster (3), and other diseases and injuries (20 patients). The main causes of the diagnostic and tactical errors were objective difficulties in the differential diagnosis due to similar symptomatology, as well as errors in the examination of the patient and haste in making a decision to make an operation.