Complications in stomach cancer surgery. A review of cases

The improvement in surgical and anesthesiological techniques have allowed a reduction in oncological surgical morbidity and mortality. The objective of this retrospective study is to evaluate the morbidity and the mortality in oncological gastric surgery up to date. Between 1979 and 1994 we evaluated 281 patients for gastric cancer, of whom 249 underwent surgery. The patients ranged in age from 34 to 88 years, with a mean age of 67.8 years, and included 158 males and 91 females. An oncological radical excision was performed in 184 patients (122 gastroresections and 62 gastrectomies). The other 65 patients underwent exploratory or palliative surgery: 26 explorative laparotomies, 26 gastroenteroanastomoses, 9 gastroresections, 3 digiunostomies and one gastrostomy. The overall post-operative morbidity has been 40.1%, 27.3% was generic and 12.8% was surgical morbidity. The overall mortality has been 9.6%, of whom about one third following surgical complications. In our experience the factors related with morbidity and mortality have been: age, preoperative nutritional state and stage of the disease.