The Burden of Specialist Urologic Care in Abuja, Federal Capital City, Nigeria: A Single Surgeons 4-Year Case Load

Abstract

Backgroud: Urologic surgery is believed to form a major part of the surgical workload in many centers but this volume of clinical workload has not been extensively reported. Abuja is Nigeria’s capital with a population of about 4 million residents. There are a total of fourteen public general and specialist hospitals with 6 consultant Urologists working in only three of these hospital serving the population. It is not known what proportion of the total surgical workload in Abuja is urological.
Objective: To report a single Urologist case load in three hospitals in Abuja, Nigeria over a 4 year period.
Methods: The out-patient clinic register, the Medical Records Department register, the surgical wards register and all retrievable patients’ case notes of the Urologic Surgery service of the three hospitals were reviewed for extraction of patient’s demographic data and clinical records
Results: 2167 urological presentations were recorded within the study period. Of these there were 1903 (87.8%) adult males, 140 (6.5%) adult females,122 pediatric males (5.6%) and 2 pediatric females(0.1%) (with an age range of 18-72years, 22– 55 years, 1 month – 12years and 11–12 years respectively). Mean ages for the adult male and female patients were 44.4 and 33.4 respectively. The mean ages for male children less than 1 year old was 6.9months and 3.1years for those older while the mean age the only 2 female children seen was 11years. The commonest urologic condition seen were male factor infertility in adult males, possibly renal/ureteric calculi in adult females and communicating hydrocele in male children.
Conclusion: A total of 2167 cases seen during the period under review by a single urologist is suggestive of a significant urology case load in Abuja. Further study is required to determine if this result is a reflection of the burden of specialist urology care in all the tertiary referral health facilities in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory.

Keywords: Case-load, specialist urologic care, Abuja, Nigeria.