Management of Postoperative Complications

Operative strategies for the treatment of descending thoracic and thoraco-abdominal aortic diseases have improved dramatically over the years, resulting in better surgical outcomes. Nevertheless, both open and endovascular procedures are at risk for morbidity and mortality. Major postoperative complications are pulmonary dysfunction, renal failure, cardiac events, re-exploration for bleeding, neurologic deficits, and gastrointestinal complications. A great deal of effort is usually applied in the preoperative and intraoperative periods by the entire management team, but successful outcomes depend on adequate monitoring, effective critical care, and appropriate multidisciplinary treatment of postoperative complications. In this chapter we focus on the management of neurologic, hemorrhagic/thrombotic, and gastrointestinal complications. Pulmonary, renal, and cardiac complications are addressed by other authors in this section.