Management of Early Postoperative Complication

The incidence of postoperative complications after gastrectomy has decreased with the development of surgical skills, apparatus, and materials. Nevertheless, postoperative complication is still the most sensitive issue and potential surrogate marker to estimate the feasibility of specific surgical procedure and availability of each surgeon or institution. For these reasons, any complication should be studied, and efforts to overcome them should be ensued. In this chapter, major early complications following gastrectomy for gastric cancer, bleeding, anastomosis leakage, obstruction, delayed gastric emptying, and pancreatic fistula, will be described regarding etiology, diagnosis, and treatment.