Abstract:
Background: Acute abdomen is an acute onset of abdominal disease entities that require
immediate surgical intervention in most of the cases. The causes of surgical acute abdomen
and their relative incidence vary in different populations. There are no published study in
study area and few recent studies on operatively treated surgical acute abdomen in Ethiopia.
Objective: The aim of this study was to assess causes, management outcome and associated
factors of operatively treated surgical acute abdomen patients from July 14-17/ 2018 in Chiro
General Hospital, Oromia. Ethiopia.
Methods: A three years facility based cross sectional study was conducted on a sample of 245
operated patients from January 1/2015–December 31/2017 in Chiro General Hospital.
Systematic sampling was used to select cases proportionally using sampling frame. The
collected data checked & doubly entered into Epidata version 3.02 and exported to SPSS
version 20.0 for data processing and analysis. Bivariate and multivariate analysis was
employed to assess the relationship between independent and dependent variables at p-value <
0.05.
Results: The leading cause of acute abdomen was acute appendicitis accounting 130 (53.1%).
The main fatal cause of acute abdomen was perforated peptic ulcer disease which was 13.6%
of perforated PUD. Acute abdomen mortality rate was 4.1%. A statistical significance
association was found between unfavorable management outcome of surgical acute abdomen
and age>=60 [AOR: 4.4, 95% CI (1.4-13.9)], out of Chiro residences [AOR: 8.8, 95%CI (3.7-
21.3)] and duration of illness >2 days [AOR: 3.9, 95% CI (1.1-14.9)].
Conclusion and recommendation: The leading cause of acute Abdomen in this study was
acute appendicitis. The most fatal cause of acute abdomen was gastro-duodenal ulcer
perforation disease. Older age of the patients, Out of Chiro residences and duration of the
illness were the risk factors for unfavorable management outcomes of surgical acute abdomen.
Regional/Zonal health bureau together with the hospital should discuss and organize meetings
or trainings for health extension workers in order to carry out health information dissemination
for rural residences of all age groups so that late presentation of patients will be reduced.
