Assessment of Non-Traumatic Acute Abdominal Cases Treated Operatively at Wolaita Sodo Teaching and Referral Hospital, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Background-Acute abdomen is an acute onset of abdominal disease entities that require immediate surgical intervention in most of the cases. Objective-The aim of this study was to determine the magnitude, causes, presenting features and outcome of non-traumatic surgical acute abdomen cases at Wolaita Sodo University Teaching and Referral Hospital, Southern Ethiopia.

Methods- Hospital based  cross-sectional study design was conducted on 270 patients operated for non-traumatic surgical acute abdomen from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2015.

Results: - A total of 633 laparotomies were performed for both elective (210) and emergency (Traumatic (47) &Non-traumatic acute abdomen (376)) cases. A total of 376 laparatomies were on emergency non-traumatic acute abdomen, (59.4%) of all laparatomies. Out of 376 records, of which 270(71.8%) had adequate information for further analysis where retrieved atWSUTRH.  Out of 270 cases, 196 were males and 74 were females. The age ranged from 3 months to 66 years with a mean age of 26.5 years. Two hundred thirty eight (88.1%) patients were from rural and 32 (11.9%) were from urban dwellers.  Majority of patients, 63.3% (171) were presented within 2-5 days of illness before operation. The main presenting features were: abdominal pain, vomiting, constipation and abdominal distention; and they were reported among 99.3% (268), 92.2% (249), 62.6% (169), 53.3% (144) of the study subjects. The three top causes of non-traumatic surgical acute abdomen were bowel obstruction 49.3% (133), acute appendicitis 31.5% (85) and Peritonitis 19.2% (52). There were a total of 4% (11) deaths.

Conclusion: Complications and deaths were more in cases from rural area due to delay in presentation. To alleviate this problem, creating awareness on acute abdomen to the general population in general has great importance.