[Complications of the surgical treatment of reflux esophagitis]

The complications presented by 36 patients submitted to anti-reflux procedures that were treated in our Hospital in a 10 year period, from September 1978 to May 1988, are analyzed. The patients were divided in 2 groups depending on the initial treatment being performed inside or outside our Hospital. The indication for the initial operation was reflux esophagitis in all patients, 4 or whom, had developed a shortened esophagus with stenosis. The selected procedures were of several types with a clear predilection for the Nissen type fundoplication with its variants. Different kinds of complications were observed; mortality was associated with gastric or esophageal leak, with a fatal outcome in 11 patients, another one died of postoperative pancreatitis and abdominal sepsis (33.3 percent mortality rate).