Fatal Complications and Early Death after Surgical Treatment of Lung Cancer in 2000 and 2010. A Population Based Study.docVIP

Surgical Science, 2013, 4, 107-109 /10.4236/ss.2013.41019 Published Online January 2013 (/journal/ss) Fatal Complications and Early Death after Surgical Treatment of Lung Cancer in 2000 and 2010. A Population Based Study Hans Rostad Cancer Registry of Norway, Norway Email: hans.rostad@kreftregisteret.no Received November 9, 2012; revised December 11, 2012; accepted December 20, 2012 ABSTRACT In the year 2000 lung cancer was operated in 349 patients in Norway, in 2010 the number was 461. In the first period fatal surgical hemorrhage occurred in eight patients, in four of them peroperatively. Postoperative hemorrhage occurred in four patients in the year 2000 and in two in 2010. Ten patients died intra- or postoperatively in the two periods which is a mortality rate within 30 days after surgery of 4.3% in the first and 1.1% in the second period. Pneumonectomy was performed in 34 patients in 2000 and eight in 2010, respectively. Altogether 19 patients died within six months after surgery without having experienced surgical complications. Pneumonectomy should not be performed in elderly and debilitated persons. Keywords: Lung Cancer Complications 1. Introduction if some of these patients could have been operable and thus treated surgically [1]. After the exclusion of 166 patients for various reasons, almost 400 were found in- operable due to advanced disease. Of the remaining pa- tients, 270 were classified as being operable and 127 possibly operable. We concluded that the policy in Nor- way concerning evaluation and treatment of lung cancer patients was inadequate and requested lung physicians to be more aggressive for this group of patients. Because of favorable short and long time results we have recom- mended this aggressive approach to patients with lung cancer, even with small cell types [2-4]. We have com- municated this opinion in numerous international and Norwegian forums and