[Emergency reoperations in surgery of the gastrointestinal tract]

Data concerning the therapeutic approach in a series of 28 patients, representing 1.3 per cent of the total number of abdominal operations performed in the Chair of Propedeutics of Surgical Diseases over the period 1990-1995, are retrospectively analyzed. In 19 of them primary operative interventions are done on an emergency basis. In further 19 cases the complications have inflammatory character. A total of 31 operations are done with lethality amounting to 36 per cent (10 patients). Multiorganic insufficiency develops in five of them (mean age 39 years). The remainder, dying of septic complications, are with mean age 76 years. The successful treatment of intraabdominal postoperative complications is largely dependent on the surgeon's experience and skills, material equipment and facilities available and on the algorithm of the therapeutic approach adopted.