[Analysis of fatal outcomes after surgery in cancer and inflammatory-destructive diseases of the lungs].

The author discusses the structure of complications and the immediate causes of death in 129 individuals after surgical interventions on the lungs in 1948-1952 (45 persons) and in 1984-1989 (84 persons). The revealed growth of the incidence of thromboembolism of the pulmonary arteries as a complication and the immediate cause of death of patients who underwent operation for carcinoma is probably linked, on the one hand, with increased survival after the operation and, on the other, with the severity and injurious character of the extended operative interventions. Some differences and similarities were established in the character and incidence of postoperative complications and the immediate causes of death in lobectomy and pneumonectomy. It is shown that despite the extended character of the operations for lung carcinoma they proved to be nonradical in 11% of cases, while distant metastases which were unrecognized during life were discovered on autopsy in 20% of cases.