Objectives: Identify and evaluate the indications of splenectomy cases in Nossa Senhora da Conceição hospital from January of 1995 to July of 2004.
Methods: All cases of splenectomy which were found on the files from the medical data service (SAME) during the period already mentioned were reviewed.
Results: A total of 76 patients handbooks were obtained, 63 of these patients were analyzed in order to fulfill basic requisites to this research.
It was observed a predominance of splenectomies for traumatic causes (60,32%) in contrast with the non-traumatic (39,68%).
There was a male predominance in traumatic cases and a female predominance in non-traumatic cases.
Among the traumatic causes the main surgical indication was for motor vehicle accidents (39,46%) and among the non-traumatic indications it was Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (68%).
The acessory was not detected in any studied surgeries. Blood transfusion was made in 50,79% splenectomies.
Imunoprofilaxy was reported only in 4,76% of the cases.All surgeries were total splenectomies.
Conclusions: Splenectomies are more frequent in male adults.
Traumatic causes are more common in male and the trauma from motor vehicle accident is the main cause of splenectomies. The non-traumatic causes are more frequent in female and the main cause was Idiopathic
Thrombocytopenic Purpura. The imunoprofilaxy is still a low frequency procedure as recorded in this hospital. The complications are more common in traumatic splenectomies.

Keywords: 1. Splenectomy;
2. Indications;
3. Imunoprofilaxy.