[Mortality and postoperative cause of death in pediatric surgery]

We analysed our patients in pediatric surgery from 1959 to 1990 in regard to post-operative causes of death according to the Petren scheme. "Post-operative infection" as a cause of death dropped from 45% to 2%, "post-operative pneumonia" from 10% to 4%. Death due to accompanying congenital defects has increased from 3% to 15%. The cause of death "main disease" remained the same with 18%. Post-operative causes of death due to wrong diagnoses ranged at 2%, wrong treatment as cause of death decreased from 18% to 4%. In the 41 years' range of our survey, 115,598 children were operated as in-patients. During the first 5-year-period postoperative mortality was 2.2%, during the last 5-year-period 0.12%.