A Five-year Retrospective Study of the Pattern of General Surgical Procedures Performed at a Tertiary Health Institution in Nigeria

BACKGROUND: There is a paucity of documentation of the procedures performed by general surgeons in sub-Saharan Africa. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To describe the pattern of general surgical procedures performed at our institution. STUDY DESIGN: A descriptive, retrospective study STUDY SETTING: Divisions of general surgery, department of Surgery. MATERIALS AND METHODS: All general surgical procedures performed in the department of surgery between 1(st) January 2007 and 31(st) December 2011 were obtained from the central theatre operation registers and registers of the three divisions of General Surgery – gastrointestinal, oncological, and endocrine surgery. Data was analyzed using version 25.0 of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. RESULTS: The records of 3,160 patients, 67% of which were complete, who underwent a total of 3,317 procedures, were obtained. Most of the patients were in the 25-44-year age range with a mean age of 41.4 ± 16.8 years and a male-to-female ratio of 1.5:1. A total of 2,537 procedures (80.3%) were elective. There were 3,050 non-trauma-related procedures (96.5%) with only 110 procedures (3.5%) being trauma-related. Overall, the commonly performed surgical procedures included laparotomies, 997(30.06%), biopsies, 985(29.70%), herniorrhaphies, 378 (11.40%), mastectomies 270 (8.14%), appendicectomies, 213 (6.42%) and thyroidectomies, 161 (4.85%). The two most common procedures for emergency and elective cases were exploratory laparotomy and biopsy respectively. CONCLUSION: General surgeons at our institution perform a wide variety of mainly elective, non-trauma procedures, laparotomy being the commonest. Improved data collection system and periodic surgical audit would guide judicious allocation of meagre healthcare resources and ensure focused surgical training in the developing countries.