Mortality and Complications of Large‐bowel Resection for Carcinoma1

Abstract

The mortallty and complications of large-bowel resection for carcinoma performed at the Princess Alexandra Hospital since the Colorectal Project commenced in 1971 are reviewed and compared with the results in other published series. There were 443 patients in this prospective study, and 375 underwent resection of their tumour. The overall operative mortality was 6.4%for colonic lesions it was 8.0% and for rectal 3.4%. The mortality for elective curative resections was Z.6%, and for emergency resections it was 10.8%. The anastomotic leak rate was 6.8%, but was higher (16.6%) when the anastomosis was done at the time of emergency resection. No patient whose anastomosis leaked but who had had a previous.defunctioning proximal colostomy died. There was a wound infection rate of 15.1%.

Colorectal cancer audit: a comparative study before and after establishing a specialty colorectal surgery unit

“…The APR rate of 17% for rectal cancer in the colorectal group is lower than other published rates in specialist colorectal units around the globe [4–6]. This is in comparison to published rates in general units that exceed 50%[4,7,8].…”

Abdominoperineal resection for adenocarcinoma of the low rectum

“…Despite its magnitude, APR is a safe operation. Operative mortality varies from 0-6% [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] (Table 2). This mortality rate has remained relatively stable over the past 2 decades.…”

Early postoperative results of surgery for rectal carcinoma as a function of the distance of the tumor from the anal verge: results of a multicenter prospective evaluation

“…A relationship to tumor location has been established only for anastomotic leak rate. Clinically manifest anastomotic leaks following rectal resection occur in about 3-30% of cases [2,4,5,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. The leak rate depends directly on the depth of the resection plane.…”