Paediatric day care surgery at the korle-bu teaching hospital, accra, ghana

Abstract

This paper documents an example of successful daycare surgery in a developing country. We report the prospective experience of paediatric daycare surgery from a paediatric surgery unit of a teaching hospital in an urban centre of a developing country and assess the degree of parental satisfaction of the procedure. The literature regarding daycare surgery for children has mainly come from developed countries where daycare is well established, especially in many sub-specialties such as otorhinolaryngology. Examples from developing countries are few although the potential for provision of service to larger groups of children is understated in developing countries in particular. A questionnaire was developed and administered to the parents of patients undergoing daycare surgery under general anaesthesia over the six-month period in our unit.