Pediatric Surgical Admissions and Their Outcomes at Adama Hospital Medical College: A Facility Based Cross Sectional Study

Tsegaye Ketema

doi:10.11648/j.ajp.20170304.12

Abstract

Pediatric surgical admissions dramatically increased throughout the world as a result of increased trauma, emergency diseases and survival of congenital diseases. So, Facility based cross sectional study was conducted to identify the common pediatric (Age ≤ 15 years) surgical admissions and their outcomes at Adama Hospital Medical College. All admitted surgical patients from Jun 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015 were included in the study. Data abstraction tool was constructed to retrieve information from charts. Data was entered to SPSS version 20. Descriptive and analytic studies were performed. P value ≤ 0.05 with 95% confidence interval (CI) was used to interpret the findings. The mean age of study participants was 6 years ± 4.5 SD. Males were 276 (71.9%) making male to female ratio of 2.5:1. Gastrointestinal conditions (33.8%) were commonest causes of admissions followed by trauma (25.5%) and congenital anomalies (19%). There were five deaths resulting in a mortality rate of 1.3%. Factors associated with death were: delay in presentation, prolonged length of stay in hospital and delay in intervention. Shorter time of presentation to intervention (< 6 hrs) was found to be significantly associated with the favorable outcomes [Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR): 36.4, 95% CI: 3.7, 38]. Those who stayed < 7 days in the hospital were more likely to have favorable outcome (AOR: 1.7, 95% CI: 1.6, 16.8) compared to their counterparts. Delayed intervention, prolonged hospital stay and trauma are independent predictors of patient outcomes. Death in Pediatric patients with surgical conditions can be averted by avoiding these delays. Efforts to shorten length of stay in the hospital could also improve patient outcomes.

Highlights

The study was conducted in Adama hospital medical college, which is located in Adama town, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia
21% of the participants were under one year of age. 71.1% (N=273) of the study units were from rural parts of the region (Table 1)
Even if it is not direct predictor of patients’ outcome in our study, clearly it will contribute to prolonged length of hospitalization

Summary

Introduction

Pediatric surgical admissions dramatically increased throughout the world as a result of increased trauma, emergency diseases and survival of congenital diseases [1]. Surgical condition is any condition that requires suture, excision, manipulation or other invasive procedure that usually but not always require local, regional or general anesthesia. Surgery is often the only solution to cure or decrease further damage, disability and death in some disease conditions. Both emergency and non emergency surgical conditions contribute substantially to the global burden of mortality and morbidity rates; this is even worse in low income countries [1]

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion