Mortality pattern and trends in surgery wards: a five year retrospective study at a teaching hospital in Hassan district, Karnataka, India

Abstract

Background: Information about pattern and cause of death is an important set of health information system, needed for deciding on possible intervention strategies. This study was undertaken with the objective to identify number of deaths in surgical wards for a period of five years and to elicit the causes and pattern of deaths among both operated and non-operated patients. Methods: A retrospective descriptive study was done on all patients admitted to surgery department of Hassan Institute of Medical Sciences teaching hospital in Hassan District, Karnataka, India from 1st January 2011 to 31st December 2015. Of all the admissions, data of expired patients in detail were extracted. Extracted data included age, gender, surgical diagnosis, co-morbid conditions, procedure performed, events leading to death and the clinical cause of death. Results: During the study period, there were 8962 admissions in all the surgery wards; of which 5540 were males and 3422 females. There were 585 deaths with an overall death per admission crude mortality rate of 6.5%. The leading causes of death were road traffic accidents with head injury (27.86%) followed by burns (27.17%) and GIT related complications (21.02%). Of the 585 deaths, males were 371 (72.79%) and females 214 (27.21%) in a ratio of 1.73:1. Conclusions: Over the study period reduction in death rate was observed. This reduction was mainly among preventable causes of death like sepsis, trauma and GIT related causes.