Surgical Complications Cause Too Many Deaths
Posted on June 26, 2008 in Current Affairs by Danteshwari
Over seven million people across the world suffer from surgical injuries that are preventable. Around a million die immediately or during the surgery. These facts were highlighted in study conducted by World Health Organization (WHO).
Around 234 million surgeries are carried out all over the world throughout the year. Surgeries had become common, with 1 out of 25 persons undergoing them at any specific time.
The study, ‘An Estimation of the Global Volume of Surgery, published in the “The Lancet”, states that the safety of the patient during the surgery was of much concern as a public health issue.
Highest number of surgeries was conducted by China, followed by Russians and Indians. The study also states that in developed countries almost 3-16% of all the inpatient surgical procedures result in avoidable complications with the death rate amounting to .8%
In developing countries, the death rate was around 10% in the case of major surgery. Deaths due to general anaesthesia affected one out of 150 patients. Infections were reported in the case of 3% of the surgeries with mortality rate being around .5% . About 50% of these adverse effects caused due to surgeries are preventable.
The WHO ‘Safe Surgery Saves Lives’ initiative , meant to avoid infections, has come out with a checklist to improve anaesthetic safety practices and smoothen the communication process among surgical team members. The effectiveness of the checklist was checked out in hospitals in Delhi, London, Toronto, Manila, Jordan, Seattle,Tanzania and Auckland.
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