Surgical inpatient cancer-related mortality in a Nigerian tertiary hospital

Abstract

Background: Cancer is a distressing condition that imposes so much physical, psychological and economic burden on the patients.  Knowledge of the mortality pattern of cancers in any institution will enable the development of tailored preventive and therapeutic strategies.
Aim: To present the cancer mortality patterns of University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH). 
Methods: A retrospective study of all patients who died from cancer during admission into the surgical wards of UPTH from 2007 to 2012. Data on demography and events leading to death were collected from all surgical wards, the emergency unit, surgical outpatients and theatre records. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 16.0. 
Results: A total of 171(32.4%) cancer-related deaths of 527 mortalities occurred among the 8230 patients admitted giving a mortality rate of 2.1%. One hundred and eight (63.2 %) were male. The yearly mortality rate were as follows : 2007 (9.4  %) ; 2008 (9.4  %) ; 2009 (15.8  %);  2010 (26.9 %),  2011(15.8 %)  and 2012 (22.8 %).  Cardiothoracic unit recorded highest death rate of 6.00%.  About 132 (77.2 %) of the patients died within 1 month on admission. The leading causes of mortality were cancer of prostate 50(29.2 %) and breast cancer 40(23.4 %).  Most of the deaths (42.2 %) occurred between 50 and 70 years old.
Conclusion: Prostate, breast, and gastro-intestinal cancers constitute a great deal of health burden in our region.  Early detection and timely interventions will be needed to reduce this burden.

Keywords: Cancer, Surgical wards, Mortality, Tertiary hospital,  Nigeria