Surgical actions in our setting

Abstract

Study objective: Know the frequency with which the pediatric population belonging to the Leon Health care Area undergoes surgical treatment, analyze its characteristics and compare adaptation to the recommended surgical calendar in the cases of scheduled surgery.
Material and methods: An observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study conducted by means of a survey to the parents of 2.577 children who came to the Pediatric Emergency Unit of the Complejo Asistencial of Leon between January 25 and March 20, 2007. The existence of surgical background and its characteristics in regards to being urgent or scheduled, age when it occurred, type of specialist (pediatric or adult surgeon), site chosen to perform it and type of intervention were analyzed. In the case of scheduled surgery, age when it was performed was compared with that recommended in the medical literature and by the Spanish Society of Pediatric Surgery.
Results:Atotal of 176 children (6.8% of the total), 68.9% of whom were male, underwent surgery. The surgery was urgent in 18.1% of the cases. None of the patients were operated on in the neonatal period while 13.7% of the school children and 9.7% of the children in the early adolescence had already undergone surgery. Atotal of 75.4% of the patients were operated on by a surgeon for adults in our province. The rest had to go to other hospitals such as Salamanca (30 cases), Madrid (17) or Oviedo (16), among others. The most frequent type of surgery performed was adenoidectomy and/or tonsillectomy (27.3%), followed by inguinal hernias (12.5%) and traumatological and orthopedic surgery (8.5%). Cryptorchism and strabismus were operations in our setting that occurred at a later age than that recommended in the surgical schedules.
Discussion: More than 5% of the pediatric age population undergoes surgery in our setting. Most of the times, it is scheduled surgery performed in children over 2 years of age. However, in more than half of the occasions, they are operated on by departments specialized in adult surgery. In the case of scheduled surgery, the age of the child is greatly adapted to the recommended surgical schedules, except in the case of cryptorchism and strabismus.