This is a report on five patients suffering from AIDS who underwent emergency abdominal surgery: One patient with gangrenous appendicitis, three with a small bowel perforation and a third with a colonic bleeding. The first outlived the appendectomy by seven month; the second and the third the small bowel resection by eight weeks resp. by 10 weeks. The fourth died four weeks after hemicolectomy and a relaparotomy with colonic resection for profuse bleeding. The fifth died because of infiltration of the heart by a malignant lymphoma. None of the patients developed any complications due to surgery. A review is given on emergencies caused by abdominal diseases which a surgeon must be aware of in patients with AIDS. The palliative character of surgery in these patients is stressed.