[Mortality rate after lung resection for bronchial carcinoma (author's transl)]

1351 patients with lung resection were analyzed. Lethality during hospital treatment was 6.2%. 11 patients, who died during the 6 first weeks after the resection, had occult metastases. The causes of death among these 6.2% were pulmonary embolism (40.5%), insufficiency of the bronchial stump and following complications (17.9%), pneumonia (10.7%), cardiorespiratory failure (9.5%) and intraabdominal complications (8.3%). Improving these figures should begin with reducing the cases with pulmonary embolism.