[Surgical interventions in dialysis patients in Piedmont: data from the Regional Registry. Working Group of the Piedmont Registry of Dialysis and Transplantation]

In this work surgical events in a large population of chronic dialysis patients are analysed. Data are obtained from the Regional (Piedmont) Registry of Dialysis and Transplantation (RPDT), that has collected information since 1981 about all chronic dialysis patients in the Region. Since 1984, causes of admission to-hospital are registered. Surgical causes of hospitalization, for purposes not related to uremia, were 538 (20% of all surgical admissions). In patients younger than 65 years, these hospitalizations account for about 6% of the cases, whereas in patients older than 65 they are less than 5%. As expected, a higher number of surgical operations is observed in diabetics, while on the contrary the lowest is performed in nephroangiosclerosis patients. Cardiovascular and bowel diseases represent almost 50% of all surgical needs. Postoperative mortality was 5.8% within 45 days from admission. Cardiac and infectious diseases and cachexia represent the more frequent causes of death. In 27 out of 28 cases at least one high risk condition was present.