Sequential system failure after abdominal surgery--an important problem in postoperative care.

During a period from 1976 to 1982, we performed gastrointestinal operation on 2406 cases. Among the 2406 operated cases, 135 (5.3%) developed severe infections. There were 36 (26.7 %) cases which fell into the sequential system failure subsequent to these severe postoperative infection. The mortality rate was high at 51.9%. The organ failure began to appear by the second week after the development of infections in the lung, liver, and kidney. When the system failure involved four organs or more, all the patients died. The correlation of the basic cause for the multiple organ failure should not be neglected.