A 2-year audit of perioperative mortality in Malaysian hospitals

An audit of all perioperative deaths within seven days of surgery in 14 major public hospitals is presented. This study is part of a quality assurance programme examining the surgical and anaesthetic practices in these hospitals. During the study period from July 1992 till June 1994, 211,354 surgeries were performed and 715 deaths were reported out of which 699 were available for analysis. The data was obtained by confidential enquiry using predetermined questionnaires filled by participating surgeons and anaesthetists and analysed by a group of peers. The overall crude mortality rate was 0.34% and the majority of the deaths occurred in severely ill patients in whom the clinical management was satisfactory. Polytrauma including head, intra-abdominal and skeletal trauma accounted for 253 of the deaths (36.19%). The other causes were bowel obstruction with sepsis, burns, ischaemic limbs, congenital malformations in neonates and pregnancy-related hemorrhage. 62.52% of the deaths occurred within two days of surgery and 85.87% were related to emergency procedures. The review identified some shortfalls in perioperative care and these were lack of adequate critical care facilities, lack of supervision, unnecessary surgery in the moribund and inadequate preoperative optimisation. The results of the study have been forwarded to all participating hospitals for implementation of remedial measures.