A Review Of In-Hospital Surgical Mortality At The Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital Nnewi, Nigeria

Abstract

Aims and Objectives: A retrospective study to determine In-hospital surgical mortality rate, gender and age distribution of cases and operations associated with In-hospital surgical mortality at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi.
Patients and Methods: Data was collected from the theatre operation registers, ward registers and case notes of all patients who were admitted into the surgical wards including those who died within 30 days of admission. From the 1st of January 2000 to 31st December 2003.
Results: Two thousand, Nine hundred and ninety two (2,992) patients were admitted into the surgical wards under the care of surgeons within the period of study and there were 249 deaths giving an In-hospital surgical mortality rate of 8.3%. Only 124 cases notes could be retrieved from the records dept. (50%). Ninety-seven (78.2%) of these patients were males and 27(21.8%) were females giving a (male: female ratio of 3.6:1). The age of the patients ranged from less than 1yr to 95yrs.
Forty three (34.7%) patients were operated upon while 81 (65.35) patients did not have any form of operative intervention because the patients presented late and were in poor clinical states. The ratio of those who were operated upon to those who were not operated upon was 1:1.9.
Conclusion: In-hospital surgical mortality of 8.3% in our centre is the same as that for low volume hospitals (LVHS) in developed countries. Also, from this study, In-hospital surgical mortality was not operation related since more deaths occurred in patients who were not operated because of late presentation, hence aggressive enlightenment campaigns aimed at encouraging people to report early to hospital may help to reduce the rate of In-hospital surgical mortality in our centre.


Keywords: In-hospital, surgical mortality, operation related.

Tropical Journal of Medical Research Vol. 11 (2) 2007: pp. 26-30