Chest complication after abdominal surgery

In spite of many advances in medicine, anesthetic technique and surgical managements, pulmonary problems arethe most frequent postoperative complications, particularly after abdominal surgery. As postoperative pulmonarycomplications, atelectasis, pelural effusion, pneumonia, chronic bronchitis and lung abscess can be occured. This study include evaluation of chest films of 2006 patients (927 male, 1079 female), who had been operated abdominal surgery from Jan. 1979 to June, 1980 in the Hanyang university hospital. The results were as follows; 1. 70 casesout of total 2006 cases(3.5%) developed postoperative chest complications, 51 cases (5.5%) in male, 19 cases(1.8%) in female. 2. The complication rate was increased according to the increase of age. The incidenced of the postoperative complications over 40 years of age was higher than the overall average complication rate. 3. Themost common postoperative pulmonary comlplication was pleural effusion, next pneumonia, atelectasis and pulmonaryedema respectively. 4. The complication rate of the group of upper abdominal surgery is much higher than the group of lower abdominal surgery. 5. Complication rate was increased according to increase of the duration of operation. 6. There were significant correlations between the operation site and side of the complicated hemithorax.