Background: The provision of safe and timely surgical care is essential to global health care. Low- and middle-income countries have a disproportionate share of the global surgical disease burden and struggle to provide care with the given resources. Surgery cancellation worldwide occurs for many reasons, which are likely to differ between high-income and low-income settings. We sought to evaluate the proportion of elective surgery that is cancelled and the associated reasons for cancellation at a tertiary hospital in Malawi.
Methods: This was a retrospective review of a database maintained by the Department of Anesthesiology at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi. Data were available from August 2011 to January 2015 and included weekday records for the number of scheduled surgeries, the number of cancelled surgeries, and the reasons for cancellation. Descriptive statistics were performed.
Results: Of 10,730 scheduled surgeries, 4740 (44.2%) were cancelled. The most common reason for cancellation was infrastructural limitations (84.8%), including equipment shortages (50.9%) and time constraints (33.3%). Provider limitations accounted for 16.5% of cancellations, most often due to shortages of anaesthesia providers. Preoperative medical conditions contributed to 26.3% of cancellations.
Conclusion: This study demonstrates a high case cancellation rate at a tertiary hospital in Malawi, attributable primarily to infrastructural limitations. These data provide evidence that investments in medical infrastructure and prevention of workforce brain drain are critical to surgical services in this region.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
---|---|
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00268-017-4356-1 | DOI Listing |
BMC Health Serv Res
January 2025
School of Medicine and Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Rwanda, P.O. Box 3286, Kigali, Rwanda.
Background: Strong partnerships, community engagement, and multisectoral collaboration in the health supply chain are synergistic pillars towards achieving universal health coverage. In Rwanda, the health supply chain involves the collaboration of various stakeholders, including distributors, manufacturers, wholesalers, and customers. However, since the eruption and ending of COVID-19, there has not been any study to assess stakeholders' perspectives on the status of the benefits, challenges, and best practices of collaborative partnerships among health supply chain stakeholders in Rwanda.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBlood Adv
January 2025
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, United States.
Although social determinants of health (SDoH) investigations have shown limited analyses of socioeconomic and race-ethnic status on certain hematologic malignancies, the impact of factors beyond those across a fuller scope of hematologic cancers remains unknown. The Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), a tool for assessing varied US-census derived sociodemographic factors, allows the specific quantification of SDoH in dynamic, regional contexts for their associations with hematologic-malignancy inequities. To assess the summative influence of varied SDoH-factors on hematologic malignancy outcomes and discern which SDoH-factors contributed the largest associations towards disparities 796,005 adults with hematologic malignancies between 1975-2017 were identified for this retrospective cohort study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS One
January 2025
Orthopedics Department, First Teaching Hospital of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tianjin, China.
Objective: The objective of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to clarify the rehabilitation efficacy of virtual reality (VR) balance training after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR).
Methods: This meta-analysis was registered in PROSPERO with the registration number CRD42024520383. The electronic databases PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Biomedical Literature, China Science and Technology Journal Database, and Wanfang Digital Periodical database were systematically searched to identify eligible studies from their inception up to January 2024.
Ann N Y Acad Sci
January 2025
Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, Geneva, Switzerland.
Food fortification (i.e., industrial fortification and biofortification) increases the micronutrient content of foods to improve population nutrition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Sci Technol
January 2025
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, United States.
Enteropathogens are major contributors to mortality and morbidity, particularly in settings with limited access to water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure. To assess transmission pathways associated with enteropathogen infection, we measured household environmental conditions and assayed 22 enteropathogens using TaqMan Array Cards in stool samples from 276 six-month-old children living in communities along a rural-urban gradient in Northern Ecuador. We utilized multivariable models, risk factor importance, and distance-based statistical methods to test factors associated with infection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!