Epidemiological Comparison of Anorectal Malformation With Other Gastrointestinal Abnormalities in Patients in the Pediatric Ward

Background Anorectal malformations are congenital defects wherein there is defective development of the anus and rectum. For babies born with congenital anorectal malformations, prompt treatment is crucial which requires detection of the anomalies at the earliest. This study aimed to determine the epidemiology ofanorectal malformations in the Pediatric Unit of a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan over a period of 19 months. Methodology An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted retrospectively from January 2020 to September 2021 using a non-randomized consecutive sampling technique. Patients aged less than eight years were included, whereas burnt, torn, and incomplete records from the Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) were excluded. SPSS version 26 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA) was used for data entry and analysis. Binomial and multinomial logistic regression were applied for analyzing the association between explanatory and dependent variables. Results Of the 1,108 patients, 72 (6.5%) patients had anorectal malformations. Gastrointestinal diseases made up about 64.3% of all diseases. Among gastrointestinal causes, the prevalence of anorectal malformation was up to 10.1%. The mortality of anorectal malformation patients was low (2.85%) compared to mortalities due to other gastrointestinal abnormalities (8.25%). Anorectal malformation had significantly lower odds of mortality (adjusted odds ratio = 0.19, p < 0.05) compared to other gastrointestinal abnormalities. Conclusions This study has provided data about the prevalence of anorectal malformation and its mortality which were calculated as 6.5% and 2.58%, respectively. Female gender, neonates, and delayed presentation were seen to have higher mortality, highlighting the need to screen all neonates pre- and post-natally to avoid any misdiagnosis.