Retrospective Analysis of 1436 Cases of Infant's Anesthesia

Mo, Keun Seok; Kim, Hong Sun; Lee, Kyung Cheun; Cho, Yung Lae

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Infants are very different from children and adults in the point of anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and psychology. The mortality rate of infant anesthesia is higher than that of child and adult. So that this study is to analyze the infant's operation and to recognize the tendency and problems of infant's anesthesia and also to improve the outcome.
METHODS
A retrospective analysis was performed on 1436 infants who had operations from april 1987 to february 1995 according to age, sex, department, disease, operation time, postoperative complications, mortality rate and anesthetic method.
RESULTS
Total number of operation tend to increase annually. The male to female ratio was 67.5% to 32.5%. The distribution of patients by department was 60.6% of general surgery, 21.0% of plastic surgery and small percentage of other department. The distribution of disease was the following : inguinal hernia - the most common; cleft lip and palate, intussusception and others. The postoperative complications developed in 98 of 1436. The most common complication was the respiratory problems, the others were sepsis, electrolyte unbalance, gastrointestinal and CNS problems. The total mortality rate was 3.6%. The emergency operation case was 17.9%.
CONCLUSIONS
The most common distribution of age was neonate and the most commm department was general surgery and the most common disease was inguinal hernia. The most common postoperative complication was respiratory problems and the second was infection and sepsis. The mortality rate in preterm infant, neonate, emergency operation and long duration operation was higher than total motality rate.