Abstract:
BACKGROUND: General anesthesia and regional anesthesia are the type of anesthesia for lower
abdominal surgery. each type of anesthesia usage depends on different factors. In Ethiopia, even though
there were many researches done on surgical procedures, they failed to address the type of anesthesia
administered for lower abdominal surgery.
OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study is to assess type of anesthesia given for patients who undergone
lower abdominal surgery in Adama referral hospital from September 1, 2002-paugme 5, 2004E.C.
METHODS: A retrospective cross sectional design based on retrospective record review of type of
anesthesia administered for patients who underwent lower abdominal surgery. The sample size was 384
and simple random sampling technique was used to select the study population. Questionnaire was
prepared and the anesthesia record was collected from 384 anesthesia charts. The data was entered in
to a computer and analyzed.
RESULT: From 384 major lower abdominal surgeries done, majority of lower abdominal surgery done
was C/S (32.8%) and Prostatectomy is the second most common major lower abdominal surgery in the
study period (27.6%). GA (ETT) was the common type of anesthesia both at elective and emergency
period.
CONCLUSION: General anesthesia (ETT) was the most widely used type of anesthesia for patients who
underwent lower abdominal surgery. The rate of spinal anesthesia for major lower abdominal surgery
was less frequent. From the lower abdominal surgeries C/S constitute the highest proportion in this
study area and period.
RECOMMENDATION: The anesthetist better practices to reduce the frequency of GA, which in turn
reduces the complications that follow GA and increase the frequency of SA
