District hospitals (DHs) care for the majority of surgical patients in Malawi, but data on district hospital surgical capacity are limited. We sought to evaluate the management and outcomes of surgical patients presenting to Salima District Hospital (SDH) in Malawi. Using the SDH surgery registry, we compared patients managed operatively and those non-operatively and performed logistic regression to identify factors associated with operative management. We then compared cases performed at SDH with procedures recommended to be performed at DHs. We included 1374 patients, of whom half were managed operatively. The most common procedures performed were abscess drainage and wound debridement. Logistic regression analysis revealed that patients with abdominal diagnoses were least likely to be treated operatively. Though SDH performs most procedures recommended for the district hospital level, patients requiring laparotomies were most likely to be transferred to a referral hospital. Future studies should assess barriers to performing laparotomies at SDH.
Keywords: Emergency general surgery; district hospitals; global surgery; operative capacity; postoperative outcomes.