Evaluation of hospital quality of care outcomes in a teaching hospital in Ethiopia: a retrospective database study.

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to evaluate hospital mortality rates, readmission rates and length of hospital stay (LOS) among adult medical patients admitted to a teaching hospital in Ethiopia. DESIGN: We performed a retrospective study using routinely collected electronic data. SETTING: Data were collected from Yekatit 12 Hospital Medical College between January 2021 and July 2023. PARTICIPANTS: The analysis included 3499 (4111 admissions) adult medical patients with complete data. OUTCOME MEASURES: We used mortality rates, readmission rates and LOS to measure the quality of the outcomes for the top 15 admission diagnoses. A multivariable Cox proportional hazard model was used to identify the statistically significant predictors of mortality with p values<0.05 and a 95% CI. The Kaplan-Meier curve was used to estimate the failure rate (mortality) of the admitted patients. RESULTS: The median age of patients was 50 years and men accounted for 1827 (52.3%) of all admitted cases. Non-communicable diseases accounted for 2537 (72.5%) admissions. In descending order, stroke, 644 (18.29%); heart failure, 640 (18.41%); and severe pneumonia, 422 (12.06%) were the three most common causes of admission. The readmission rate was 25.67% (1056/411), and 61.9% of them were readmitted within 30 days of index discharge. The overall median LOS was 8 days. The median LOSs in the index admission (11 vs 8 days, p value=0.001) of readmitted patients was significantly higher than not readmitted. The in-hospital mortality rate was 438 (12.5%), with the highest number of deaths occurred between days 30 and 50 of admission. The mortality rate is significantly higher among patients with communicable diseases (adjusted HR, 1.64, 95% CI: 1.34, 2.10) and elderly patients (≥65 years) (adjusted HR, 1.79, 95% CI: 1.44, 2.22). Septicemia, chronic liver diseases with complications and HIV with complications were the three common causes of death with a proportional mortality rate of 55.2%, 27.93% and 22.46%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Mortality, median LOSs and readmission rate were comparable to other national and international studies. Multicentre compressive research using these three quality patient outcomes is required to establish national standards and evaluate institutional performance.

Epidemiology and the diagnostic challenge of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis in a teaching hospital in Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: Ethiopia reported a high rate of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) and the cases are increasing since the last three decades. However, diagnostic evidence to initiate TB treatment among EPTB cases is not well known. Therefore, we described the epidemiology and assessed how EPTB is diagnosed in a teaching hospital in Ethiopia. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective review among all adult EPTB cases diagnosed in Yekatit 12 Hospital Medical College from 2015 to 2019. Using a standardized data abstraction sheet, we collected data from patients' medical records on sociodemographic, sites, and laboratory diagnosis of EPTB cases. RESULTS: Of the 965 total TB cases, 49.8%(481) had a recorded diagnosis of EPTB during the study period. The mean age of EPTB patients was 32.9 years (SD±13.9) and 50.7% were males. Tubercular lymphadenitis (40.3%), abdominal (23.4%), and pleural TB(13.5%) were the most common sites of EPTB involvement, followed in descending order by the genitourinary, skeletal, central nervous system, abscess, breast, and laryngeal TB. We found a histopathology finding consistent with EPTB in 59.1% of cases, Acid-fast bacilli positive in 1.5%, and the rest diagnosed on radiological grounds. In the majority of cases, more than one diagnostic method was used to diagnose EPTB cases. CONCLUSIONS: Nearly half of TB patients had a recorded diagnosis of EPTB that comprise heterogeneous anatomical sites. All EPTB patients were started anti-TB therapy without definitive microbiology results. This indicates the diagnostic challenge of EPTB faced in our setting and proves to be significant for TB control in Ethiopia.

Guideline Recommendations for Empirical Antimicrobial Therapy: An Appraisal of Research Evidence for Clinical Decision-Making in Ethiopia.

INTRODUCTION: The rapid spread of drug resistance is forcing standard treatment guidelines (STGs) to become more appropriate with due consideration of the evidence on the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) situation in Ethiopia. Therefore, we aimed to assess the local AMR recommendations in the STGs for empirical antibacterial prescriptions for the five common infectious syndromes. We also determined the quality of AMR reviews conducted in the country. METHODS: We conducted a review of the STGs used in the health centers, general hospitals, and primary hospitals in Ethiopia and assessed the AMR recommendations in STGs for empirical antibacterial prescriptions for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), urinary tract infection (UTI), tonsillopharyngitis, acute otitis media (AOM), and bacterial dysentery. Next, we performed an overview of AMR reviews published in Ethiopia. We used the MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar databases to identify AMR reviews. The review characteristics were extracted. We also evaluated the quality of each included AMR review using a measurement tool to assess the systematic review scale (AMSTAR 2). RESULTS: A total of 6 STGs and 12 AMR reviews conducted in the country were included. The choice of empirical antibacterials for similar infectious syndromes (and editions) was comparable across the three levels of the health care system. None of the STGs evaluated included the local AMR recommendations for empirical antibacterial prescriptions for five common infectious syndromes. Of all the AMR reviews included, 75% had low and below methodologic quality, and none had a high-quality score using the AMSTAR 2 tool. CONCLUSION: Standard treatment guidelines did not consider local AMR recommendations for empirically prescribing antibacterials for common infectious syndromes. The AMR reviews published in the country produced poor methodologic quality evidence for clinical applications. This highlights the need to improve the methodologic quality to provide the best available evidence for clinical decision-making and curb the ongoing AMR in Ethiopia. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Retrospectively registered (15/07/2020).