Original Research Article
Year: 2020 | Month: October-December | Volume: 5 | Issue: 4 | Pages: 250-257
Pattern of Liver Disease Admissions at a Tertiary Hospital in North Western Nigeria
Abdulmumini Yakubu1, Abubakar Sadiq Maiyaki2
1Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Clinical Sciences, College of Health Sciences, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, Nigeria.
2Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Clinical Sciences, College of Health Sciences, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, Nigeria.
Corresponding Author: Abdulmumini Yakubu
ABSTRACT
Background: Liver diseases cause significant public health problems worldwide. They are associated with poor long-term clinical outcome resulting in 2 million deaths per year worldwide. The objective of this study was to determine the relative frequencies of liver diseases and evaluate the etiological factors among patients admitted to the medical wards in our centre.
Materials and Method: This was a retrospective descriptive analysis of digestive disease patients admitted from 1st January 2013 to 31st of December 2017 to the medical wards of Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital Sokoto state, Nigeria. This is a tertiary hospital sitiated in the North Western region of Nigeria and serves at least five states in the region namely Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina and Niger states. Data were extracted from patients’ case folders during the period under review. The data were validated using Microsoft excel version 13 and exported into SPSS version 23.0 (Chicago IL) for windows; for statistical analysis. The data were analyzed for demographic and other clinical characteristics as categorical variables.(Chi-square Fisher exact test and Bivariate spearman`s correlation) was applied between demographic, clinical presentation (Independent variables) and liver diseases variant and Outcome as (dependent variables) P ≤ 0.05 is considered as statistically significant.
Result: Out of 1266 digestive disease patients admitted to the gastroenterology service on the medical wards during the five-year period, liver diseases accounted for 30.4% of all the digestive diseases in the same period. There were three hundred and eighty-five patients diagnosed with liver diseases. There were 310(80.5%) males and 75(19.5%) females, with a male to female ratio of 4.1:1. The overall mean age of the patients and age range was 46.3±15.5 and 11-90 years respectively. Average age of male patients was (46.5 ± 15) while for female patients’ mean age was (45.6 ± 16.4). The peak age incidence occurred within the fourth decade of life accounting for 26.2%; there were more male patients 86(85.1%) within these age category than the counterpart gender 15(14.9%). The commonest liver diseases were; primary liver cell carcinoma which accounted for 176(45.7%), followed by liver cirrhosis 98(25.5%) and acute hepatitis 52(13.5%).HBV was the commonest risk factor for liver disease and accounted for 280(72.7%) cases, followed by HCV 70(18.2%), HIV/HBV 15(3.9%) alcohol consumption 11(2.9%), fatty liver disease 5(1.3%), while autoimmune diseases had 4(1%).
Conclusion: Our findings show that primary liver cell carcinoma was the commonest cause of admission among GIT diseases in our environment; also the majority of patients were male. In view of this, health education and public enlightenment on hepatitis B and C screening tests is the primary preventive strategy to be considered.
Keywords: Liver Disease, Admissions, Tertiary Hospital, North western, Sokoto.