10 Years of Acute Care Surgery: Experiences in a Single Tertiary University Hospital in Korea

Abstract

Purpose: Acute care surgery (ACS) has been shown to improve patient outcome and treatmentefficiency in the U.S. ACS was introduced to the Department of Surgery, Yonsei University College ofMedicine, Seoul to solve the problems associated with delays in surgical evaluation of non-traumapatients who needed emergency surgery, and to offer exposure to a wide variety of surgical casesto general surgical fellows and residents. The objective of this study was to describe the 10-yearexperience of the ACS department in a single center. Methods: A retrospective chart review was conducted at the Department of Surgery, YonseiUniversity College of Medicine, Seoul, for all patients admitted from March 2008 to February 2018. Patients were grouped into either the trauma or non-trauma group, and were further classifiedaccording to their diagnosis, and the type of operations they had undergone. Results: There was a total of 2,805 patients, including 1,001 trauma patients and 1,804 non-traumapatients. The average hospital length of stay was 14 days and the total in-hospital mortality rate was3.6%. Trauma mechanisms included blunt (92.6%), penetrating (7.0%) and burn (0.4%) trauma. Themajority of non-trauma patients were admitted for appendicitis (37.1%), followed by cholecystitis(21.7%). There was a total of 1,561 operations conducted. The most frequent operations wereappendectomy (38.3%) and cholecystectomy (19.5%), followed by adhesiolysis (7.8%). Conclusion: A working ACS department has been implemented in a Korean medical center.