Abstract
Emergency cases are an increasing part of the workload of a general surgical unit Little accurate quantitative data is presently available on the nature and impact of this workload on a typical district general surgical service. This study reports the results of a prospective one year audit of the emergency cases dealt with by a typical Irish district general surgical service. The general surgical service admitted 2,278 patients acutely, which represented 58% of the total number of admissions to the service. Eighteen patients required immediate transfer for specialist neurosurgical (11), vascular (6) or plastics (1) treatment. Of those cases admitted 1,396 (61.3%) were males and 882 (38.7%) were females. There were 1,786 (78 %) adults and 492 (21.6%) paediatric cases. Abdominal pain (48.0 %), head injury (23.8 %) and urological problems (11.0%) accounted for the majority of the caseload. Within the abdominal pain group, the pre-dominant diagnoses were non-specific abdominal pain (36.0%), appendicitis (19.5%), cholecystitis/obstructive jaundice (10.8%) and peptic ulcer disease (10.0%). There were 456 emergency operations performed, representing 19.5% of all the inpatient general surgical procedures. 328 (72%) of these were performed out of normal working hours. Only 12% of the procedures were major. The commonest operations were appendicectomy (51%), abscess drainage (13%), wound toilet (13%) and laparotomy (11%). The emergency peri-operative mortality was 1.1%. The positive appendicectomy rate was 92%.
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Davies, M.G., Shine, M.F. & Lennon, F. Surgical emergencies in Ireland. I.J.M.S. 160, 303–306 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02957857
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02957857