What is considered the most serious,risky surgery?

Oooh, I don't know... some of the repairs for congenital heart defects are really complex, very lengthy and result in a very sick baby. Total anomalous pulmonary venous return is notoriously bad. And then there are the conjoined twin separations. Yeesh, long, difficult and very risky.

Sorry to get off topic but this needed to be addressed.

You probably heard this with regards to chronic back pain. Do not let a chiropractor EVER mess with anyone who has any acute problem with their vertebrae. High velocity maneuvers on an unstable spine spells disaster.

A chiropractor's place is with chronic low back pain and pretty much nothing else. For clearly minor acute MSK strain I personally have found they also do a pretty good job. For anyone requiring surgery from spondylolysis or even spondylolisthesis do not let your patient go to a chiropractor first.


Most dangerous surgeries are anything in which the surgeon is trying to catch up: Major trauma, disections, ruptures aneurysms, etc. The process has already started to compromise the patients.

Things like normal aneurism repairs, while risky are no where near as bad as when the aneurism has already ruptured

I have heard (but have no stats to back it up) that gastric bypass has the highest morbidity/mortality rate....but I'm not sure if it falls under more elective vs necessary surgery to get that rank (a dissecting AAA must be addressed, gastric bypass is always a choice). I have seen them go very, very well, but when they go bad, they REALLY go bad.

My vote would be for the multiple organ transplant surgeries. It is weird but people usually get thru multiple organ transplant surgery alive but the recovery period after is a field strewn with land mines.