Surgery and Healing in the Developing World - Dartmouth-Hitchcock

Chronic Pyogenic Osteomyelitis in Rural Africa
Table 1. Distribution of patients according to sex
Sex Number Affected Percentage
Male 66 51.97
Female 61 48.03
Total 127 100.00
CPO thus strikes both sexes equally in our area.
187
The study is comprised of two periods, the first is from January to December
1994 (102 cases). The second period is prospective, from January 1995 to November
1996 (25 cases). This made for a total of 127 cases in all. The ages of our subjects
were between 0 and 16 years old. We classified our data according to the sex of the
patient, the site of CPO, duration of hospitalisation, financial cost and the patients’
proximity to a health care facility.
Results
Sex
See Table 1.
Affected Bones
Out of the 25 patients studies (second phase of the study), there presented with
foci of CPO in two different bones simultaneously. These pairs were tibia-fibula,
femur-tibia and scapula-humerus. This accounts for the total of 28 cases in Table 2.
Duration of Hospital Stay
The duration of hospital stay ranged from 7 to 375 days, with an average of 88.1
days. The number of hospital admissions ranged from 1 to 4 times, with an average
of 1.7 times. Thirty-three percent of patients had been admitted to the hospital at
least twice (Table 3).
Table 2. Distribution of infection according to site
Affected Bones Number of Cases Percentage
Tibia 16 54.14
Femur 7 25.00
Fibula 2 7.14
Mandible 1 3.57
Scapula 1 3.57
Humerus 1 3.57
Total 28 100.00
The tibia and femur are the most commonly affected bones.