Postoperative complications and its relationship with the severity of postoperative pain in patients undergoing thoracic surgery

Abstract

Aim: To investigate the complications that occur in our patients who underwent thoracic surgery, as well as the relationship between postoperative pain and complications.

Method: Of the 117 patients who underwent surgery between January 2018 and December 2018, there were 99 patients with pain and the other parameters whose data’s were complete. Medical records of the patients were investigated in terms of age, gender, smoking status and frequency, diagnosis, treatment, length of stay in the hospital, postoperative complications and visual analog scale (VAS). The postoperative complications and VAS values were compared statistically.

Results: The mean age of the patients was 50.52±18.46 years, 26 (26.3%) patients were female and 73 (73.7%) were male. The average length of stay in hospital was 4.08±3.06 days and average pain severity was 3.92±2.07. The most common diagnosis in our cases was lung cancer, and the most common complication was prolonged air leakage. There was a significant relationship between the severity of pain and the presence of postoperative complications in our patients (p=0.001). However, the correlation relationship was found to be low (r=0.322).

Conclusion: The results of our study revealed that optimal postoperative pain control is an important factor for preventing postoperative complications.