Is it true that every major operation you have increases the risks of the next operation?
I mean, once you are healed from one, why would it affect the risks of the next?
IANAD bit the statement doesn’t sound like it can be taken literally. Having your wisdom teeth out under general anesthesia at 16 doesn’t seem like it would affect having your appendix out at 45 at all. It seems easy enough to match surgeries and time-frames that won’t be directly related at all in terms of risk. It might be true for repeated surgery on certain organs.
Not a doc, either, but I can see the gist of the statement.
If one had a car wreck, say, and the spleen was removed surgically, then somewhere in the future, an operation on another part of the body would probably carry more risk, as the abscence of the spleen would make one more predisposed to certain infections. The second surgery would, statistically, seem to me to be “more risky” than it would be if the patient still had a spleen.
If we’re talking about multiple surgeries back-to-back, there’s bound to be more risks in the later ones, as you’d probably have a depleted supply of blood, antibodies, etc. Hormones and neurotransmitters would probably take a little while to replinish, stuff like that.
Maybe some sort of tolerance to the anesthesia, painkillers, or antibiotics would build up, making the future surgery “more risky”?
Edited for typo
It may be an artifact of the way the statistic was determined, and a case of corrilation not related to causality.
Consider what sort patients are likely to have multiple operations. These would tend to be disproportionatly older, chronically ill, accident victims, etc. Older folks often take a long time to regain strength and vitality after surgery, and the others are already at higher risk for complications with or without surgery.
So the statistic may indicate that you are at greater risk if your condition needs lots of operations, rather than that one impacts the odds for the next.