Complicaciones quirúrgicas abdominales en pacientes sometidos a cirugía cardiaca con derivación cardiopulmonar

Summary Objective: We presented the rate of abdominal complications in patients operated on with for cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass to know risk factors and which required surgical treatment. Material and methods: There were treated 1,967 patients with open heart surgery from January 1996 to January1998. The patient chart was reviewed to detect clinical signs of abdominal complication such as pain, tenderness, rebound, or X-ray film evidence. Results: There were three patients with abdominal complications (rate 0.0015). Two patients (66%) were treated for aorto coronary by-pass grafting and one patient (33%) was submitted to valvular surgery. There were two perforations of duodenum and jejunum and one acute cholecystitis. Cardiopulmonary bypass lasted 1 h and time of aortic crossclamping was 1 h; one patient died (33%) due to perforation of the jejunum. Rate of complications (0.0015) was less than in the literature reviewed (0.4-2%) because some did not need surgical management and mortality (33.3%) was similar to literature reviewed (14-44%).