Introduction: The incidence of lung cancer has increased alarmingly. Lung cancer represents the first cause of death in men. Thoracic surgery is engraved with increased morbidity and mortality. Therefore, a rigorous selection of patients undergoing such surgery is imposed. In order to establish the correct therapeutic attitude,paraclinical explorations are of the ulmost importance.
Material and methods: We conducted a retrospective observational study over a period of six years. We used the casuistry of Surgical Clinic no. 1, Mureş County Emergency Hospital. We studied the observation sheets of all the patients admitted in the Surgical Clinic no. 1 over a period of six years (1th of January 2005 to the 31th of December 2010). We studied 197 patients admitted to surgery in our clinic for lung cancer.
Results: In the group studied, the majority of patients were in the 5th and 6th decade of life. The average age was 59.48 years. In our study group, most patients were in an advanced stage of the disease, probably due to the late stage diagnosis of lung cancer in general. The majority of the patients were in the stage IIB and IIIA of disease. The overall postoperative morbidity rate was 21.82% (43 cases), In the study group we registered 8 deaths (4.06%)--it should be noted that we considered in-hospital mortality within the first 30 days postoperatively.
Conclusions: The main risk factors for postoperative complications are: late age, male gender, pneumonectomy, low FEV1 value. Certain risk factors are predictive of postoperative mortality. The most important of them are: late age, male gender, type of surgery, FEV value, associated diseases (especially cardiovascular and diabetes).