Surgical intervention for intestinal typhoid perforation

Typhoid perforation is the most fatal complication of typhoid fever in developing countries and is most often caused by the bacteria Salmonella Typhi. There are conflicting views as to which type of surgical intervention gives the best outcome. The aim of this study was to determine the mortality associated with the different types of surgical interventions employed in patients with typhoid perforation.

This was a retrospective review of the medical records of adult and paediatric surgical patients treated in the general and paediatric surgical units of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. Information was obtained from medical records at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, Ghana, between January 2009 and April 2012. The data was analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 20 and 22.

133 patients (median age of 21 years, 72.2% males) with typhoid perforation were included in the study. The typhoid perforation specific mortality rate was 12.8%. Males had a significantly lower mortality rate (7.3%) compared to females (27%). Simple bowel closure (85.7% of total) was the most common surgical intervention performed and patients operated upon with this method had a significantly lower mortality rate (9.6%) compared to patients with bowel resection (31.6%).

In this study, patients treated with intestinal resection were more likely to die from typhoid perforation and female gender was a risk factor for death. Simple bowel closure was the predominant surgical procedure.