Pattern of Adult Surgical Admissions at the Niger Delta University Teaching Hospital, Okolobiri, Bayelsa State - a 2 Year Review
Main Article Content
Abstract
Background: It is important to know the pattern of disease in any environment as this information is useful in planning intervention strategies. There is however a paucity of studies on the pattern of surgical diseases in Nigeria. We therefore aim to document the pattern of surgical diseases in adult surgical in- patients at the Niger delta University Teaching Hospital, Okolobiri, Bayelsa State.
Methods: All adult surgical patients admitted into the wards at the Niger delta University teaching hospital between January, 2010 and December, 2012 were retrospectively studied.
Results: A total of597 adult surgical in- patients were studied. There were 438 (73.5%) males and 158 (26.5%) females. The mean age of patients was 42.9± 18.2 years. The commonest diagnostic category was trauma 31.7%. This was followed by gastrointestinal conditions 20.6%, external hernias 16.1%, malignancies 8.2%, genitourinary conditions 7.7%, leg ulcers 6.5%, soft tissue infections 3.0% and others 6.2%. We observed a mortality rate of 7.5% which was highest among patients with malignancies at 24.5%.
Conclusion: Trauma was the commonest cause of surgical admission while the percentage of deaths was highest in patients with malignancies.
Downloads
Article Details
Section
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The Journal is owned, published and copyrighted by the Nigerian Medical Association, River state Branch. The copyright of papers published are vested in the journal and the publisher. In line with our open access policy and the Creative Commons Attribution License policy authors are allowed to share their work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.
The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations. While the advice and information in this journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press, neither the authors, the editors, nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
TNHJ also supports open access archiving of articles published in the journal after three months of publication. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g, in institutional repositories or on their website) within the stated period, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access). All requests for permission for open access archiving outside this period should be sent to the editor via email to editor@tnhjph.com.