Erschienen in:
01.06.2008
What is a Surgical Complication?
verfasst von:
Daniel K. Sokol, James Wilson
Erschienen in:
World Journal of Surgery
|
Ausgabe 6/2008
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Excerpt
In preparing for a lecture on the ethics of surgical complications, it became apparent that confusion exists about the definition of a “surgical complication.” Is it, as one medical website states, “any undesirable result of surgery?” [
1]. In the
European Journal of Surgery, Veen et al. [
2] provide a more elaborate definition: “every unwanted development in the illness of the patient or in the treatment of the patient’s illness that occurs in the clinic” [
2]. An esteemed historian of science suggests yet another definition in a recent volume on surgical complications: “a complication, in any sphere of endeavour, is something out of the norm, and the product of extraneous and unexpected factors” [
3]. Such is the discrepancy in definitions that Rampersaud et al. [
4] declared in 2006 that “presently, there is no clear or consistent definition of a complication in the surgical literature.” …
