ArticleScientific reports2024
Clinical audit of cases and outcomes of patients admitted to the intensive care unit at Kamuzu Central Hospital, Lilongwe, Malawi.
Article in Scientific reports, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trends and patterns of antimicrobial resistance among common pathogens isolated from adult bloodstream and urinary tract infections in public health facilities in Malawi, 2020-2024.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Diagnoses and critical care outcomes in a rural Tanzanian high dependency unit: A prospective cohort study.PloS one · 2025Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
In 2016, a new, improved and modern intensive care unit was constructed at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi. Having been operational for about 4 years, there has not been a systematic audit to gauge its performance. Therefore, this quantitative retrospective cohort study aimed at investigating the performance of the intensive care unit at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi. We analysed the patterns of admission through 250 clinical cases and their respective outcomes spanning from 1st January 2019 to 31st December 2019 using STATA. Descriptive and inferential statistics were computed. We also had a follow-up discussion with the Head of the unit to better understand the unit's functioning. Out of the 250 admissions, we evaluated 249 case files. About 30.8% of all patients were referred from the main operating theatre, and 20.7% from the casualty (emergency medicine). Head injury (26.7%) and peritonitis (15.7%) were the commonest causes of admission. The overall mortality was 52.2% with more females (57.5%) dying than males (47.9%). Head injury and peritonitis had the highest contribution to the mortality accounting for 25.3% and 16.9% of all deaths respectively. In conclusion, despite the new unit registering an improved performance compared to the old unit's 2012 mortality of 60.9%, the current mortality rate of 52.2% generally reflects a suboptimal performance. The intensive care unit is still grappling with a number of challenges that need immediate attention including few working beds, shortage of critical care specialists and nursing staff and lack of standard admission criteria.
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