5 Common Complications of Surgery

When you undergo any kind of surgery in any part of your body, there is a likelihood that things may not end up as you and your doctor had expected.

Pain is one of the expected outcomes since your doctor will cutting through your skin or other parts of your body. However, the amount of pain will depend on what type of procedure undergo and how healthy you were before you went into the operating room.

Unfortunately, no matter how well planned and intended, a surgery may yield some negative results than can affect the healing process, be life changing or life threatening.

Common complications of surgery

1. Shock

Shock is a severe drop in blood pressure that causes a dangerous slowing of blood flow throughout the body. Shock may be caused by bleeding leading to excessive blood loss, infection, spine injury, or metabolic problems.

2. Infection

Even though your doctor might have taken proper steps to prevent infection after surgery, sometimes infections still occur.

An infection may occur at the site of the incision, but it can also occur elsewhere in the body. When bacteria enter the site of surgery, an infection will delay healing. Wound infections can spread to nearby organs or tissue, or to distant areas through the bloodstream. Read more

Urinary tract infections are common after surgery, especially in patients who had a urinary catheter during or after their procedure.

3. Blood clots

During surgery, you will be lying still on the operating table for an extended period of time. This inactivity makes it easier for blood to clot because you aren’t moving blood through your body as quickly or as forcefully as you would normally.

Patients who undergo leg or hip procedures are likely to get deep vein thrombosis. This is a blood clot in a large vein deep inside a leg, arm, or other part of the body. Read more

If the clot breaks free, it can travel to your lungs and block blood flow leading to a condition known as pulmonary embolism.

4. Reaction to anesthesia

Anesthesia hampers your normal breathing and stifles your urge to cough. After chest or abdominal surgery, it could hurt to breathe in deeply or push air out.

Other side effects may include nausea and vomiting, feeling cold, dizziness, temporary confusion and memory loss etc.

5. Injury to other organs

In surgeries such as a caesarian delivery, as the baby is delivered through the incision, the incision may tear into areas not intended by the surgeon.

For example, the knife sometimes hits the bladder during a cesarean delivery because it is so close to the uterus.

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