Surgical Management of Peptic Perforation in a Tertiary Care Center: A Retrospective Study

The purpose of this study is to estimate disease burden, clinical features, and outcome in the emergency surgical management of peptic perforation in a rural government tertiary care center where patients are socioeconomically very poor and also impacted by lack of good quality health-care facility.

The study had retrospectively analyzed 121 patients with peptic perforation who had undergone emergency laparotomy at Midnapore medical college, West Bengal, India, from June 2018 to December 2019. All patients >12 years were included in this study. Exclusion criteria were other traumatic and nontraumatic gastrointestinal perforations.

The study population had 112 males and 9 females with a mean age of 44.80 ± 15.29 years and maximum incidence in the 6^th decade (P = 0.001). Smoking and alcohol were associated with 54.5% and 49.6%, respectively. The symptoms were pain abdomen (100%) with vomiting (38.8%) and fever (33.9%). The signs of hypotension, peritonitis, distension, and pneumoperitoneum were observed in 34.7%, 64.5%, 39.7%, and 83.5%, respectively. Only 20.7% of patients were admitted within the first 24 h. The mean duration of symptoms was 2.3 days. Most perforations were located on the duodenum (74.4%) with duodenal to gastric perforation ratio 2.9:1. The mean size was 1.02 cm. Chest infection (19%) was the most common complication. The mortality rate was 9.1%. The mean length of hospital stay was 11.1 days.

Peptic perforation remains a major disease burden in our environment predominantly due to late presentation, leading to high morbidity and mortality.