[The role of intensive care medicine in early postoperative complications. Is surgical expertise in danger?].

Intensive care medicine is the backbone of surgery. We describe a profile of parameters which has to be repeatedly evaluated to allow early detection of postoperative complications. Complex surgical diseases are analyzed to underscore that only a surgeon experienced in intensive care medicine is able to interpret abnormalities in correlation with the intra-operative findings resulting in appropriate decisions with respect to diagnostic measures and reintervention. An increasing lack of motivation compromises the necessary training of young surgeons. Work hour limits already prolong education in the operative core competence thus making residents decline a necessary extension of ICU training beyond the compulsory 6 months. Identification of young surgeons with intensive care medicine is further hampered by the establishment of interdisciplinary operative ICUs excluding surgeons from the leadership. Our current survey of 38 university departments of general and gastro-intestinal surgery in Germany shows that a cooperative ICU steering structure of anesthesiologists and surgeons exists in only 19%. The imminent deficit of training in surgical intensive care medicine can only be counteracted by equal leadership structures.