Morbidity and mortality of anaesthesia in Thai patients
Pausawasdi, S.
Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand 69(8): 407-414
1986
ISSN/ISBN: 0125-2208 PMID: 3783068 Document Number: 269796
Anaesthetic complications which occurred in 45,362 patients who received anaesthesia from 1981 to 1984 were collected from weekly departmental audits and analyzed. Of this number, 149 patients had complications (0.33%) with a long term morbidity of 16 patients and mortality of 35 patients. The analysis was done with regard to age, sex, type of operative, surgical specialty, ASA physical status, anaesthetic technique and period, and affected system. The result of analysis showed that 135 complications could be avoided. Causes of complications were mainly due to the inexperience of personnel in training who tended to do too much rather than too little during a crisis. In order to reduce the rate of complications, recommendation was made that patients in the extreme age group, with poor physical status, and with severe type of surgery such as brain and heart surgery should be anaesthetized by more experienced anaesthesiologists and should not be taken for granted and used for teaching and training. More supervision during training of personnel was also recommended.