[Seroma: a complication of systemic-pulmonary shunt with a tubular prosthesis]

The accumulation of clear fluid leaking from a tubular prosthesis and confined within a fibrous pseudomembrane has been defined as a "seroma". Both the literature and our experience on this complication have been reviewed. Fifty-three cases of seroma have been reported after implantation of a tubular prosthesis. In our experience, from June 1982 to September 1988 we observed 11 cases (11/108 = 10.1%) of seroma complicating a modified Blalock-Taussig procedure. The mean age of these patients was 2 years 2 months. The diameter of the implanted tubular prostheses was always 5 mm. Among these cases, we report the details of a child, 1 year 10 months old, in whom the seroma significantly complicated the surgical history. According to the data derived from the literature and from our experience, we derived the following risk factors for the occurrence of seroma: age of the patient, size of the prosthesis, surgical manipulations, arterial-venous gradient, transprosthetic flow.