["Stress" ulcer--a problem of the general surgeon]

Contemporary way of living accompanied by everday frustrations, a frequent use of medicaments, an easy application of corticosteroids, complexity of an opeation, so as an increased incidence of polytraumas --those are the factors responsible for an increasing rate of stress ulcus. The rate of 54 verified stress ulcus in the period from 1969-1979 in Regional Medical Centre of Banja Luka, at Surgical Department, are very often indicative of this disease. Thirty eight operatively treated patients are indicative of severity of this disease. The authors are reporting their experiences in resolving this disease by method of vagotomy with partial gastrectomy in comparison to simple sutures of acutely developed ulcus in addition to PS vagotomy. Perforation, which has, usually, been bigger than the chronic ulcus, we had in 31 cases. If the reports of the world authors are reliable, perforation occurs in 5% of cases only, therefore it is clear how many such conditions has remained undetected or treated under various other "working" diagnoses: (DIC, consumer coagulopathy, fibrinolysis, etc.". The stress ulcus is the disease which is a danger to any patient at Surgical Department.