[The state of the surfactant system and postoperative lung complications].

The article deals with the question of the influence of the surfactant system state determined during the operation upon the postoperative pulmonary complications. For the assessment of the surfactant the clinical material (pieces of the lungs taken from 182 patients during operations) was used. It has been shown that a reduced amount of surfactant can be established in cases of hypoventilation, atelectasis and pneumonia developing as early as during the operation. The stability index which is the quantitative criterion of the method may be considered to be a certain prognostic test relative to postoperative pulmonary complications.