Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Pediatric Post Neurosurgical Care in a Lower Middle-Income Country: The Zambian Experience

OBJECTIVE: Pediatric postoperative neurosurgical care is an essential component of a child's treatment pathway. It is important to better understand how neurosurgeons in lower middle-income countries (LMICs) have been able to address socioeconomic and systemic factors to improve their patients' access to quality pediatric postoperative neurosurgical care. We aim to characterize the pediatric neurosurgical postoperative system in place in Zambia and to discuss how these efforts have been implemented to improve outcomes and address socioeconomic barriers to accessing health care.-METHODS: We acquired a patient list of 90 tenants of House of Hope (HOH)-an out-of-hospital center caring for children awaiting surgery, as well as those recovering from surgery. Of the patient list, 44 patients qualified for our study. Survey responses and occurrence of demographic and clinical characteristics were calculated. Non-normally distributed variables (age) were reported by median and interquartile range (IQR). Dichotomous variables were presented as percentages. Fisher's Exact test was applied to compare categorical data and hospital re-admission. A P-value of <0.05 was considered significant.-RESULTS: Our study demonstrates two key findings: (1) low 30-day hospital re-admission rate of 9% and (2) favorable postoperative experience by patient families. Of the 44 pa-tients, a majority were 1-year-old children (n = 31, 70%) and female (n = 24, 55%) (IQR 1e2 years). Presenting conditions included: hydrocephalus only (n = 35, 80%), hydrocephalus and myelomeningocele (n = 5, 11%), myelomeningocele only (n = 2, 5%), cerebral palsy (n = 1, 2%), and encepha-locele (n = 1, 2%). Half (n = 22, 50%) of the patients lived in east Zambia, 8 (18%) lived in central, 8 (18%) in north, 5 (11%) in south, and 1 (2%) in west Zambia.-CONCLUSIONS: We report the first qualitative and quantitative analysis of postoperative care for LMIC pedi-atric neurosurgical patients in the academic literature. Quality, patient-centered postoperative pediatric neuro-surgical care that is rooted in addressing socioeconomic determinants of health produces good outcomes in LMICs.