Surgical emergencies and manpower.

The emergency surgical admissions to one firm during the year 1979 have been reviewed. Emergency cases constituted half the workload of this and other units in the hospital. Male and female admissions were equal. The under twenty year old was the largest age group admitted. The commonest diagnosis, non specific abdominal pain, was made in 22.9% of all the patients and acute appendicitis accounted for 11.1%, whilst the remainder fell into a large number of diagnostic categories with only a few patients in each. Only 30.2% of all the patients had an operation within 48 of admission. These figures suggest that surgical trainees may no longer gain the experience in managing acute admissions which was once possible and that any future training programmes must ensure wider exposure to surgical emergencies.