Pattern of wounds in Bingham University Teaching Hospital, Jos

Abstract

Wound represents a major health burden in Africa and most parts of the world. In this study, woundrelated visits and hospitalization in a teaching hospital in Northern Nigeria were documented; this involved a retrospective on-site medical record review of wound-related hospital admissions from 1st April 2014 through 31st June 2014. Out of 139 patients that visited the hospital for wound-related cases, 63.4% were males, month of June had the highest admission (43.9%), and the age group 21-30 years formed the largest proportion (38.9%). The leading cause of wound was incision (54.0%), followed by avulsion (33.1%), analgesics were the most prescribed drugs (34.2%), antibiotics ranked the second prescribed drugs (32.9%), pentazocine was the most analgesic commonly administered (33.0%) and 60.3% of the patients that visited the hospital for wound-related cases stayed up to 7 days. There were significant association between the gender of the patients and causes of wounds, drugs prescribed, types of analgesics prescribed as well as a significant association between causes of wounds and length of stay at 0.01 level (2-tailed). This study provides considerable information on major causes of wounds and will be useful for planning program of education and health care policy.