An Observational Study on Complications in Early Postoperative Period after Emergency Laparotomy in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

BACKGROUND An emergency laparotomy is a life-saving procedure undertaken mostly in acute conditions without much time for preoperative preparation of the patient. Patients undergoing emergency laparotomy have disproportionately high morbidity and mortality compared to elective laparotomies. We wanted to find out the incidence of postoperative complications after emergency laparotomy during the early postoperative period in Burdwan Medical College and Hospital which in turn will help to identify the areas requiring more improvement in terms of prevention, diagnosis and management of those complications resulting in an overall better outcome. METHODS This was an observational, descriptive study conducted on 100 patients undergoing emergency laparotomy for various indications, early postoperative complications were identified and tabulated and incidences of those were presented. RESULTS In this study, it was found that the most commonly occurring complications post emergency laparotomy were, wound infection (67%), fever (61%), nausea and vomiting (39%), respiratory infections (35%), paralytic ileus (19%), thrombophlebitis (11%), urinary infections (5%) and death (5%). CONCLUSIONS The most commonly occurring complications during the early postoperative period were wound infection and fever. Hollow viscus perforation was found to be the most common indication for emergency laparotomy associated with the maximum incidence of postoperative wound infection. Other complications such as nausea and vomiting, respiratory tract infection, paralytic ileus etc. were also found. Death was found to be the most dreaded complication during this early postoperative period.