Purpose: To identify presurgical and surgical risk factors for postsurgical complications in the pheochromocytoma surgery.Methods: A retrospective study of pheochromocytomas submitted to surgery in ten Spanish hospitals between 2011 and 2021. Postoperative complications were classi ed according to Clavien-Dindo scale.Results: One hundred and sixty-two surgeries (159 patients) were included. Preoperative antihypertensive blockade was performed in 95.1% of the patients, being doxazosin in monotherapy (43.8%) the most frequent regimen. Patients pre-treated with doxazosin required intraoperative hypotensive treatment more frequently (49.4% vs 25.0%, P=0.003) than patients treated with phenoxybenzamine, but no differences in the rate of intraoperative and postsurgical complications were observed. However, patients treated with phenoxybenzamine had a longer hospital stay (12.2±11.16 vs 6.2±6.82, P<0.001) than those treated with doxazosin. Hypertension resolution was observed in 78.7% and biochemical cure in 96.6% of the patients. Thirty-one patients (19.1%) had postsurgical complications. Prolonged hypotension was the most common, in 9.9% (n=16), followed by hypoglycaemia in 6 patients and acute renal failure in 4 patients. 13.0% of complications had a score ≥3 in the Clavien-Dindo scale. Postsurgical complications were more common in in patients with diabetes, cerebrovascular disease, higher plasma glucose levels, higher urinary free metanephrine and norepinephrine, and with pheochromocytomas larger than 5 cm.
Conclusion:Preoperative medical treatment and postsurgical monitoring of pheochromocytoma should be especially careful in patients with diabetes, cerebrovascular disease, higher levels of plasma glucose and urine free metanephrine and norepinephrine, and with pheochromocytomas >5 cm, due to the higher risk of postsurgical complications.
Introduction:Pheochromocytomas are rare neuroendocrine tumours that produce catecholamines [1]. They are a lifethreatening condition because catecholamine secretion is unpredictable, resulting in hypertension, arrhythmia, and/or other cardiovascular complications [2]. Surgery represents the primary treatment for pheochromocytomas [1]. Due to improvements in perioperative treatment, anaesthesia and surgical techniques, the mortality has dropped markedly in the last thirty years, but the risk of cardiovascular complications remains still high [3]. Intraoperative complications, including hypertensive crisis, hemodynamic instability and tachyarrhythmias, among others, have been reported in 30-50% of the pheochromocytoma surgeries [4][5][6]. The main postoperative major complications are prolonged hypotension and rebound hypoglycaemia [1]. However, postsurgical complications are usually less reported in pheochromocytoma studies, and are usually described in around 20-30% of the patients in recent series [4][7][8][9].Few studies have evaluated the grade of these complications using validate scales as the Clavien-Dindo score [4][10][9][8]. Moreover, studies evaluating risk factors for p...
