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

Purpose Acute care surgery (ACS) has been shown to improve patient outcome and treatment efficiency in the U.S. ACS was introduced to the Department of Surgery, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul to solve the problems associated with delays in surgical evaluation of non-trauma patients who needed emergency surgery, and to offer exposure to a wide variety of surgical cases to general surgical fellows and residents. The objective of this study was to describe the 10-year experience of the ACS department in a single center. Methods A retrospective chart review was conducted at the Department of Surgery, Yonsei University 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 classified according 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-trauma patients. The average hospital length of stay was 14 days and the total in-hospital mortality rate was 3.6%. Trauma mechanisms included blunt (92.6%), penetrating (7.0%) and burn (0.4%) trauma. The majority 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 were appendectomy (38.3%) and cholecystectomy (19.5%), followed by adhesiolysis (7.8%). Conclusion A working ACS department has been implemented in a Korean medical center.