Mohamed Abdulkarim
Anorectal malformations are some of the most common structural congenital malformations treated by pediatric surgeons globally. A bucket-handle deformity is a subtype of it characterized by a subepithelial midline raphe fistula. The etiology has not been fully understood but it is more likely to be multifactorial; genetic and environmental factors implicated. The outcome of surgery depends on the clinical presentation, early diagnosis, other associated malformations; surgeon’s expertise and a postoperative follow up care. To analyse and evaluate pediatric patients with Bucket-handle deformity in terms of their hospital course (insight into the pre, peri and post-operative course). This study was done at Khartoum North Teaching Hospital in Khartoum; Sudan. The targeted population were all pediatric patients with this deformity in our pediatric surgery department. Data was collected using a data collection sheet filled by the in-charge surgeon in the period from (March 2016 - March 2019). In 72 pediatric patients with Bucket-handle deformity included, 39 (54.2%) were males and 33 (45.8%) were females. The mean age for patients was 2.28 years and 2.3 years at the time of surgery. When it comes to their gestational age at time of delivery, almost of them (82%) were born at term and about (16.7%) were preterm and only a small fraction (1.4%) were post-term. Ten patients (13.9%) have other anomalies that mainly cardiac and only 3 (4.2%) have an associated family history of congenital anomalies. Only 9.7% of patients were septic on admission and they had a slightly longer pre-operative and post-operatively hospital course when compared to non-septic patients. The average number of days patients stayed in hospital pre-operatively was 6.56 days and 10.72 days post-operatively. Overall, there was no postoperative complication of urinary or fecal incontinence and there was no constipation in the 6 months period following the surgery.