It used to be that surgery was required if an ulcer was bleeding or if an ulcer had become perforated, Shah said. Surgery on stomach ulcers, as well as ulcers that occur in the top part of the small intestine, are much less common than they used to be, Shah said. The mortality rate for this type of surgery was 6.8 percent, and the complication rate was 42 percent. There were 31,572 operations to repair stomach ulcers between 20, according to the study. Stomach-ulcer surgery was the fourth-most-burdensome emergency general surgery in the U.S., the researchers said. In most cases, fixing these obstructions can be done by simply removing the scar tissue that's causing them, he said.
A person's abdomen may become distended, or swollen, and he or she will be vomiting and unable to have bowel movements, Shah said. The symptoms of a blocked small intestine come on quickly, Shah said. (Unfortunately, there's no way to prevent scarring from surgery, he added.) (Think of when a hose gets a kink and water can no longer flow through it.)Ī number of different surgeries can lead to abdominal scarring, such as an appendectomy, or a tubal ligation surgery (the procedure in which a woman's fallopian tubes are tied to prevent future pregnancies), Cohn told Live Science. This tissue can cause kinks in the small intestine, obstructing it, he said. The most common reason for an obstruction actually stems from previous surgeries - namely, scar tissue, Shah said. Typically, people need this type of surgery if something is blocking their small intestine, Shah said. The mortality rate for this type of surgery was 1.6 percent, and the complication rate was 28.1 percent. There were 102,856 operations to remove scar tissue or an adhesion from within the abdomen in the U.S. In fifth place, were emergency surgeries to remove scar tissue from within the abdomen.
This blockage may be caused by feces, a foreign object or, in rare cases, a tumor, the NIH said. If the inflamed appendix ruptures, it can be life-threatening, so removing the organ is necessary, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).Īppendicitis is most often caused by a blockage to the appendix, according to the NIH. Surgeries to remove a person's appendix, operations also called appendectomies, were the most common emergency surgeries, but they also had a very low mortality rate, according to the study.Īppendectomies are required when a person has appendicitis, or inflammation of the appendix. The mortality rate for this type of surgery was 0.08 percent (the lowest of any surgery among the top seven), and the complication rate was 7.3 percent. between 20, the most of any among the top seven, according to the study. There were a whopping 684,043 appendix removals in the U.S. Once thought to be useless, the appendix could be used to help battle diseases.Ĭoming in as the sixth-most-burdensome emergency general surgery is in the U.S. The high rates of mortality and complications for this procedure may indicate that these patients were very sick when they had the surgery, he added. Therefore, the number of operations and the rates of mortality and complications given in the study are likely referring to scenarios in which the surgeons were unable to identify the problem, Shah said. For example, a surgeon may go in and find that the patient has a problem with their large intestine, and then fix that problem. So the operation isn't entered into records as a laparotomy, he said. That's because surgeons frequently have to open the abdomen in order to find the cause of a person's problem, and in most cases, the problem is identified and the surgeon can then fix it, Shah said. Paresh Shah, the chief of general surgery at New York University Langone Medical Center. The average cost was $21,963.Īn exploratory abdominal surgery, also called a laparotomy, is actually even more common than the study suggests, said Dr. The mortality rate for this type of surgery was 23.8 percent (the highest of any surgery on the list), and the complication rate was 40.2 percent. There were 9,418 operations to explore the abdomen between 20, the lowest number of procedures among the top seven surgeries, according to the study. Ranking in the top seven most burdensome surgeries was abdominal exploration.