[Combined complex surgical procedures: cardiovascular and general surgery].

Background: Aim of the paper is to evaluate the surgical indication in patients with cardiac and concomitant pathology.

Methods: In this study, are examined ten combined surgical sessions performed from 1992 at 1999, in patients affected by both cardiac and neoplastic disease with surgical indication. Eight men and two women, mean age 59.4 (range 50-68 years), eight affected by thoracic or abdominal tumour, one affected by hypersplenism and one by pulmonary cystic dysplasia with recurring pneumothorax. Anatomic resection and in two patient wedge-resection were performed except one woman who was splenectomized and one man who underwent atypical resection and pulmonary decortication. All subjects required extracorporeal circulation.

Results: No peri-operative deaths were observed and mean survival was 34 months (range 6-72 months). Moreover, there were no hemorrhages due to coagulation values of extracorporeal circulation. This approach proved useful both from the economic point of view and hospitalization time.

Conclusions: According to personal experience this can be considered a successful therapeutic choice in selected patients. These observations suggest further considerations on combined operations surgery risk and mortality-morbidity appears to be reduced by a better myocardial revascularization.