Duration of Hospital Stay and Mortality in the Medical Wards of Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Kaduna

Background: Many factors affect mortality among hospitalized patients. These include: - age, sex, diagnosis, types and complexity of co-morbidities, social and economic conditions of the patient and duration of hospital stay. Duration of hospital stay as it affects mortality is studied on our medical wards. Methods: A two year review of admissions into our medical wards between June 1999 and June 2001 was carried out. Medical records of patients as well as the discharge/death register were used. The SPSS version 10 was used to analyse the data Results: A total of 179 patients with age range of 12-85 years, mean age of 44.46 years were studied. Twenty (11.2%) of them died. Sixty-five percent of all deaths had occurred by the fifth day of admission, only 15% of all deaths occurred after the 10th day of admission. The mean duration of hospital stay for those who died was significantly shorter (P