Postoperative complications in abdominal vascular surgery

Two hundred patients who consecutively underwent abdominal vascular surgery were retrospectively studied with regard to early (less than 30 days) postoperative complications. The mortality was 4% after elective surgery and 30% after emergency surgery, which was chiefly for aortic aneurysm. The main causes of death were cardiac and renal diseases. Postoperative morbidity was mainly of cardiopulmonary or renal origin. Quantitatively, however (length of hospital stay), the foremost complications were local--haematoma, lymph fistula and necrosis in the incisions, especially in the groins. Against this background, the importance of scrupulous technique in vascular surgery is stressed.