Complications - Right adrenalectomy, open - general and visceral surgery
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Intraoperative complications
- Liver retraction may result in tears with possibly complex coagulation efforts.
- Intraoperative hemorrhage from a tear in the right suprarenal vein at its confluence with the inferior vena cava
- Injury to the inferior vena cava with hemorrhage
- Injury to the right renal pedicle
- Injury to the duodenum
- Injury to the right colic flexure
- Hormone reaction
Postoperative complications
- Pneumothorax → Chest drain
- Adrenal crisis in insufficient postoperative corticoid replacement therapy Postoperatively it may take up to six months before the remaining healthy adrenal, which had been suppressed until surgery, will have recovered enough to function normally.
- Markedly increased morbidity (wound infection, pneumonia, thromboembolism) and mortality in Cushing syndrome
- Persistent arterial hypertension in Conn syndrome
- In bilateral adrenalectomy life-long replacement of cortisone and mineralocorticoid; in 10%-25% of patients development of Nelson tumors (ACTH producing pituitary gland tumor) after about 10 years
- In pheochromocytoma risk of local recurrence through opening of tumor capsule with cell seeding.