A Study of Surgical Cases During Earthquake Disaster in A Medical College

An earthquake is an intense shaking of earth's surface which is caused by movements in earth's outermost layer. The earthquake of 25th April 2015, with a magnitude of 7.8 richter scale with its major aftershock on 12th May 2015 of 7.3 richter scale claimed around 8,962 lives across several districts of Nepal with 22,302 injuries. In this study we tried to figure out various surgical cases and the surgical procedures performed in a tertiary care hospital during an earthquake disaster.

This study was a descriptive cross-sectional study of hospital data on all admitted surgical cases during an earthquake disaster. A total of 238 earthquake victims brought to emergency department of Kathmandu Medical College Teaching Hospital , a tertiary care center, from 26th April 2015 to 7th Jun 2015, for the period of 42 days were included. Those brought dead and discharged after primary treatments were excluded. Data obtained were entered and analysed in Microsoft Excel 2010.

Among 238 patients enrolled, 122 (51%) were male and 116 (49%) female with male to female ratio of 1.05:1. Age group (31-60 years) with an average age of 45 years were encountered most frequently 110 (46%) with the maximum number of patient burden from Sindhupalchowk district 80 (33.6%). Orthopedic surgery 185 (76%) appeared to be the most frequent followed by neurosurgery, plastic surgery, general surgery and dental surgery.

In natural disaster like earthquakes, traumatic injuries are very common and thereby various surgical procedures especially ortho-plastic are the domain of treatment modalities. Disaster preparedness and combined surgical team effort needs to be focused to reduce both mortality and morbidity.