Non‑pregnancy related gynaecological causes of death in a Nigerian Tertiary Hospital
Abstract
Background: Most gynaecological causes of death are related to pregnancy such as ectopic pregnancy, unsafe abortion, septic incomplete abortion, and gestational trophoblastic diseases. Hence, it was necessary to review the non‑pregnancy related causes of gynaecological deaths in our centre.
Aims and Objectives: The aim of this study was to review gynaecological deaths due to non‑pregnancy related causes among women in our centre at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH).
Materials and Methods: This was a 5‑year retrospective review of case notes of women who died in the gynaecological ward of UCTH. The demographic profile of the women, the diagnosis and the cause of death were extracted for analysis. All those whose diagnoses were pregnancy related were excluded.
Results: There were 38 gynaecological deaths, which were not pregnancy related. Of these, ovarian cancer (19) and cervical cancer (11) constituted 30 cases or 78.9% of causes of death. Endometrial cancer (3), uterovaginal prolapse (3), uterine leiomyosarcoma (1), and vulvovaginal cancer (1) constituted 8 cases or 21.1% of deaths. No deaths were recorded from uterine fibroids, dysfunctional uterine bleeding, pelvic inflammatory disease, etc.,
Conclusion: Cancers constitute the majority of causes of gynaecological deaths in women who are not pregnant. This emphasises the need for cancer prevention, early diagnosis and effective treatment.
Keywords: Death; gynaecological disease; non‑pregnant women; University of Calabar Teaching Hospital
The entire contents of the Tropical Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology are protected under Indian and international copyrights. The Journal, however, grants to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable non-commercial purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship and ownership of the rights. The journal also grants the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal non-commercial use.
This journal content is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
