Complications of Esophagectomy for Esophageal Cancer

Abstract

Introduction: Esophagectomy is one of the procedures with the highest postoperative morbidity in digestive cancer surgery.

Objective: To describe the complications related to scheduled subtotal esophagectomy according to variables of interest.

Methods: A descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out in the General Surgery Services at Saturnino Lora and Juan Bruno Zayas hospitals in Santiago de Cuba, from 2010 to 2019. The population consisted of 81 patients, out of which a random sample of 68 patients undergoing elective subtotal esophagectomy for esophageal cancer was selected. The variables investigated were presence of postoperative complications and type of surgical technique used. In addition, they were classified in grades according to Clavien-Dindo.

Results: All the patients were operated by open technique by programmed subtotal esophagectomy, the resection by the Ivor-Lewis technique was performed in 69.2%. For all the surgical techniques used, atelectasis (39.7%) prevailed as a postsurgical complication, and among the infectious complications, pneumonia prevailed in 30 patients (44.1%), while for non-infectious surgical complications, pneumothorax was mostly incidental for 25.0%. The highest number of complications was in Clavien-Dindo grade II.

Conclusions: The presence of post-surgical complications of the disease is notable, corresponding to what is reflected in the medical literature. There was significant relationship between the presence of smoking, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and thoracotomy with some of the complications found.

Keywords: esophageal cancer; esophagectomy; complications.