Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The aim is to reflect on the epidemiology of the patient population at a tertiary hospital for pediatric surgery, diagnostic pattern, and mortality in Somalia retrospectively. METHODS: In this study, 163 patient who were hospitalized to Pediatric Surgery Clinic of Mogadishu Somalia Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Training and Research Hospital in 2018 were included. Data regarding age, gender, diagnosis, surgical condition, mortality rate and cause of the death were recorded from the patient charts and the institutional digital database. RESULTS: Of 163 patients 47 were female (28.8%) and 116 were male (71.2%). The mean age of the patients was 6.4 ± 4.8 years. The main diagnoses were congenital malformation (34.4%), acute abdomen (25.8%), traumatic injury (23.3%), infection (9.8%) and neoplasm (6.1%). Mortality rate was 9.8% and the leading cause of death was sepsis by 87.5%. Perforated appendicitis, intestinal obstruction and intussusception were creating the 68.7% of the diseases that result in death. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that two-thirds of the surgical deaths could be prevented with timely presentation. We think that the health policymakers in Somalia should focus on how to improve the access to surgical care, patient transfer, timely presentation, and training of pediatric surgeons and to overcome the poor surgical outcomes.