Measurement of immune function in surgical patients: their relationship to post-operative infection

ABSTRACT

A wide spectrum of laboratory tests was applied to a 20 patients, before and after surgery, to assess their susceptibility to infection. Four developed intra-abdominal sepsis and live suffered from minor 5 common antigers were variable and did not relate to the development of infection. Phytohaemagglutin [PHA] induced lymphocyte transformation did not show any marked change and again failed to predict infection in individual patients. The number of polymorphs in the blood rose and the number of lymphocytes fell in the immediate postoperative period. The latter was apparently related to the precipitious rise in serum cortisol found immediately after operation. The levels of immunoglobulins g, A and M and comlement components C1 q, C3, C4 and B showed some significant changes but there was no evidence of a deficit in a single immune mechanism after surgery. two striking findings were a doubling, on the seventh post-operative day, of the lymphocyte response to PHA stimulation in medium supplemented with autologous serum and on the same day, an increased number of lymphocytes DNA without mitogenic stimulation