Association of Postoperative Complications with Anemic Women Underwent Gynecologic and Obstetric Surgeries

Objective: Preoperative anemia among women has been recognized as a risk factor for adverse postoperative complications following gynecologic and obstetric surgeries. Therefore, this retrospective analysis was conducted to assess the association of postoperative complications and comorbidities with anemia in women underwent gynecologic and obstetric surgeries.

Methodology: A retrospective study was carried out in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Hamdard hospital, Karachi by using non-probability, purposive sampling technique. A total of 200 women were chosen for this study wherein 89 women were anemic and 111 were non-anemic. Duration of the study was one year from July 2018 – June 2019. Adult female patients of 18 to 65 years having elective or emergency surgical procedure were included. Chi square test was applied to evaluate the association between religion, socioeconomic status, comorbidities, and postoperative complications with anaemia.

Results: The study results showed that the mean age of studied women was found 32.04±7.79 years and mean hospital stay was reported 3.38±1.08 days. Regarding Comorbidities, 89(100.0%) non diabetic were anemic while 6(5.4%) diabetic and 105(94.6%) non-diabetic were non-anemic with a significant association of diabetes with anemia (p=0.026). Regarding postoperative complications, significant association of fever was found with anemia (p<0.001). Moreover, 71(79.8%) anemic and 39(35.1%) non-anemic reported postoperative nausea and vomiting with a significant association between them (p<0.001). As far as wound infection is concerned, significant association of wound infection was observed with anemia (p=0.020).

Conclusion: This study concluded that postoperative fever, nausea and vomiting were observed significantly higher in anemic women than non-anemic underwent gynecologic and obstetric surgeries. Wound infection was also significantly associated with anemia. Therefore, educational and nutritional policies should be planned to persuade women to use iron-rich diet in order to decrease the burden on patients facing these complications.