A Descriptive Study of Surgical Emergencies in a First Referral Unit of Trans-Himalayan State in India

The primary health care (PHC) approach provides an essential foundation for health emergency and risk management, and for building community and country resilience. The PHC approach ensures the availability of integrated health services for most health needs through primary care and essential public health functions, and thus reduces nonemergency-related morbidity and mortality. The objective of this study was to describe the distribution of the medical/ surgical emergencies in a civil hospital of district Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. We conducted this observational descriptive study in Civil hospital Baijnath of district Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. We obtained the secondary data from the emergency register and included all the surgical emergencies which were attended in this hospital over a period of one year from July 2019 through June 2020. During the period of one year from July 2019 to June 2020, a total of 4874 patients were admitted in emergency department of Civil Hospital Baijnath District Kangra (H.P.). The age of patients ranged from 7 years to 81 years with mean age of 38 years (SD= 9.2).773 (15.9%) of patients were having history of trauma following road side accident, fall, assault or accidental injury. 2263(46.4%) patients had acute abdomen and 1028(21.1%) patients managed for urinary obstruction. 226(4.6%) patients were of surgical infections and 584(12%) other patients were managed for various diseases like upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage, acute limb ischemia, terminal stage of malignancy, late post operative complications, septic shock. Out of 4874 patients attended, 1231 (25%) of the cases were referred to tertiary health care facility. Infrastructure and supplies are integral to service delivery and the development of resilient primary care, and investments must be made in this area to guarantee good quality services.