Abstract

Pulmonary complications have detrimental effect on the disease progression leading to increased hospitalization, postoperative morbidity and mortality. Aim: To find the incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications in patients undergoing elective intracranial surgery. Methods: This Prospective observational study was conducted from 2020- 2022 in Superspeciality hospital, Shireen Bagh, Srinagar over a period of 18 months after approval by Institutional Ethical Committee. All patients underwent questionnaire about the preoperative data including Age,  Sex,  Weight,  ASA physical state,  History of smoking,  Obstructive sleep apnea and  Snoring. All the intracranial procedures were performed under general anaesthesia. After the surgical procedure patients were shifted to Superspeciality ICU and were followed daily from immediate postoperative period until a new surgical intervention, hospital discharge or death. Results: Out of 132 study patients, 79 (59.8%) were diagnosed with Meningioma, 18 (13.6%) patients Glioma, 17 (12.9%) with Pituitary Macroadenoma, 6 (4.5%) with CP Angle Tumor, 5 (3.8%) with Medulloblastoma, 4 (3%) with Posterior Fossa Tumor and 3 (2.3%) with Astrocytoma. Postoperative Pulmonary Complications were observed in 31 (23.5%) patients. Most common complication was found out to be Atelectasis (17.4%) followed by Tracheobronchitis (6.8%) followed by Pneumonia (6.1%), followed by ARDS (4.5%) and Weaning Failure in 6 (4.5%) study participants. Total number of postoperative pulmonary complications observed were 52. the mean duration of stay in ICU of patients who had POPCs was much higher (4.65 days) as compared to those who did not have POPCs (1.83 days). Conclusion: In our study, given a modest sample size, the incidence of POPCS in patients undergoing elective craniotomies was 23.5% and we were able to identify certain risk factors of POPC in our population, however more replicative studies with a larger sample size are warranted to substantiate these findings so that future preventive strategies can be formulated.