Tracer indicators in patients with acute surgical abdomen

Abstract

Introduction: The tracer indicators are elements to be taken into account by the surgical services to know the morbidity and mortality in the non-traumatic acute abdomen. Objective: To describe the characteristics of tracer diseases in the non-traumatic acute abdomen in the General Surgery service of the Manuel Ascunce Domenech University Hospital in Camagüey. Methodological design: A cross-sectional longitudinal descriptive observational study was carried out in 657 patients. The data came from the medical records and were processed using descriptive statistics, relating some variables in a non-inferential way. Results: 60.6% of the patients were men. 30.7% were between 40 and 59 years old. There were 334 patients with symptom evolution time between 24-47 hours. 42.5% presented acute appendicitis. There were 29.2% complications, 66.1% of them were infectious. Mortality was 10.2%. 37.3% of the deceased presented pulmonary thromboembolism, 50.7% presented intestinal occlusion. The reoperation and readmission rates were 5.3% and 7.6%, respectively. Conclusions: The study of tracer diseases shows that: Almost a tenth of the patients died, being pulmonary thromboembolism the cause of the deaths. The time of evolution greater than 24 hours, infectious complications, ages over 40 years and intestinal occlusion as a cause of acute abdomen seemed to influence the mortality of the sample studied. Evisceration and infection of the operative site were the causes of admissions and reoperations.