Surgical admissions to the Rift Valley provincial general hospital, Kenya

Objective: To describe the pattern of surgical admissions to the Rift Valley Provincial General Hospital and in particular the epidemiologic characteristics of trauma admissions. Design: Retrospective study (1st January 1998 – 31st December 1999). Setting: Rift Valley Provincial General Hospital, Nakuru. Subjects: All patients admitted to the various surgical wards (excluding eye-patients) during the stated period and whose medical records were available and complete. Methods: Medical records (files) of all surgical patients admitted during the period of study were retrieved using admission data from casualty, surgical out-patient and Annex Hospital registers. Further medical data was obtained from wards admission registers, nurses report books and records from theatre and radiology books. A special data-form was used to collect the required information. The data was subjected to simple statistical analysis. Results: There were 5907 surgical admissions of whom 3411 cases seventy three point five percent were trauma admissions, 1499 cases (25.4%) were non-traumatic emergency surgical admissions and 997 cases (16.8%) were elective surgical admissions. 73.5% of all trauma admissions were males and 57.6% were in the 21-60 year age-group. The most common injuries were soft-tissue injuries, fractures, burn injuries and head injuries, while the leading causes of trauma were road traffic accidents (32.7%), assaults (23.8%), falls (15.5%) and burns (13%). Fifty one point seven percent of all performed surgical operations were trauma-related. The mean length of hospital stay for trauma patients was 10.4 days. Trauma was the leading cause of death (6.6%) among all surgical admissions. Conclusion: Trauma, particularly due to road traffic accidents and violence is a growing public health problem in this region that urgently calls for specific intervention measures. Further studies of disability levels as well as costs of trauma care are recommended. (East African Medical Journal: 2002 79(7): 373-378