Burden of Encephalocele in Tigray Region, Northern Ethiopia: Hospital-Based Study
Keywords:
Surveillance, Hospital-based, Occipital, Frontal, Nasal, Skull defects, neural tube defectsAbstract
Background: Encephalocele is a severe neural tube birth defect, which is associated with child mortality, morbidity, and lifelong disability. In Ethiopia, there is a need to understand the burden of encephalocele as surveillance data are lacking.
Objective: To determine the prevalence and clinical pattern of the encephalocele in the Tigray region, Northern Ethiopia.
Methods: Deliveries with encephalocele were identified from eight hospitals of Tigray region, Northern Ethiopia between October 2016 and June 2017. The clinical diagnosis of the infants affected with encephalocele was reported by senior obstetrics and gynecology specialist and the data were collected and recorded by trained midwives and mid-level emergency surgery and obstetrics professionals under the supervision of senior clinicians and biomedical researchers. Data were collected applying a standard data collection method across the participating hospitals, and analyzed using SPSS version 20. The prevalence rate of encephalocele was calculated per 10,000 live and stillbirths.
Result: A total of 10 infants were born with an encephalocele from a total of 14,903 live and stillbirths during the study period. The overall prevalence of infants with encephalocele was 6.7 per 10,000 live and stillbirths, and the majority (60%) of babies born with encephalocele were stillbirths. The highest rate (per 10,0000 live and stillbirths) of infants with encephalocele was observed in Kahsay Abera Hospital from Western Zone (31.2) and Adigrat Hospital from Eastern Zone of Tigray (28.9). The commonest type was found as occipital encephalocele (70%) followed by nasal frontal type (30%).
Conclusions: This multi-center study covering eight hospitals in Tigray region of Northern Ethiopia provides important insights on the prevalence of encephalocele. We found that encephalocele cases are encountered in hospitals in Ethiopia, and resources are needed to address these cases and improve their outcomes. Studies of this nature can provide reasonable information on a relatively rare condition, especially when resources are lacking to conduct large population-based birth defects surveillance. Future studies can investigate the prevalence using population-based surveillance approaches.
