Unplanned splenectomy--harbinger of complications.

Splenectomy alone or in combination with other major operative procedures has been implicated as the cause of excessive morbidity and mortality. We retrospectively studied 151 consecutive patients with splenectomy performed between 1985 and 1992. Subsets of patients according to indication for splenectomy were compared with a cohort of patients having elective open cholecystectomy.