ABSTRACT Following major surgery pulmonary complications are an important cause of postoperative morbidity, contributing to significant increases in length of hospital stay, overall hospital costs and patient discomfort. Physiotherapy aims to prevent and treat pulmonary complications and a number of high quality studies have investigated the efficacy of various physiotherapy interventions in ma...

OBJECTIVE To check the respiratory muscle strength in cardiac surgery and the relationship with the postoperative pulmonary complications. METHODS Sixty-tree adult's patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery were enrolled in this study. In the day of the surgery all patients did the respiratory muscle strength test. In the postoperative a multidisciplinary team took care all patients and t...

BACKGROUND Postoperative pulmonary complications are as frequent and clinically important as cardiac complications in terms of morbidity, mortality, and length of stay. However, there has been much less research and no previous systematic reviews of the evidence of interventions to prevent pulmonary complications. PURPOSE To systematically review the literature on interventions to prevent pos...

BACKGROUND Our aim was to gain insight into the incidence rates for, distribution of, and risk factors of postoperative cardiovascular and respiratory complications in major head and neck surgery. METHODS We performed a retrospective review of 469 patients who had undergone primary major head and neck surgery. Outcome measures were incidence rates, risk factors, and distribution over time for...

BACKGROUND An evaluation of cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) screening and pre-operative pulmonary rehabilitation in reducing postoperative complications and improving fast-track recovery in high-risk patients who undergo resection for lung cancer. METHODS Of 342 potential lung cancer cases, 142 high-risk patients were finally divided into two groups: group R (n = 71) underwent an inte...

THE Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson was one of the earliest known victims of a respiratory complication after surgery, dying of pneumonia 10 days after an otherwise successful ether anesthetic in 1863. Despite subsequent advances in anesthesia and surgical care, postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) still are a significant problem in modern practice. This commentary examines why ...