Pattern of deaths in medical wards of a rurally situated tertiary health institution, Ido-Ekiti, Nigeria.

OBJECTIVE To determine the basic demographic patterns and the frequency of medical causes of deaths in medical wards of a tertiary health center located in a rural community of Nigeria. MATERIALS AND METHODS A retrospective analysis of patients' records admitted into medical wards of the Federal Medical Centre Ido-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria between January 2009 and December 2011 was carried out. Analysis of data was carried out using the simple descriptive statistics with Statistical Packaging for Social Sciences (SPSS Inc. Chicago IL) SPSS version 16 software. RESULTS A total number of 1456 patients were admitted into the medical wards during the study period and 79 deaths were recorded. Male mortality was 94 (52.5%) while female mortality was 85 (47.5%) with male to female ratio 1.1:1.0. The age range was 18-100 years with the mean of 56.15 + 19.63 years. Deaths from non-communicable diseases (63.1%) were higher than those from communicable diseases (36.9%). CONCLUSION The most common cause of deaths in medical wards were non-communicable diseases, worse on the elderly especially males. Stroke and human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome were the principal contributors to medical mortality.