Abstract

Post-operative sore throat significantly impact patients’ satisfaction during post-operative period. Many factors can contribute to postoperative sore throat and the incidence varies with the method of airway management. To determine the predictors and incidence of postoperative sore throat. In this facility based cross sectional study, 245 elective gynecologic and general surgical patients who had had surgery at Jimma University Teaching Hospital between February 01 and April 30, 2015 were interviewed during postoperative period  between 6 and 24 h using a structured questionair. After outliers and missing value checked the data manually entered into SPSS Version 20 IBM. In addition to descriptive analysis odds ratio with 95% confidence interval was used in bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis to determine the effect of predictors on the postoperative sore thoat and hoarsness of voices. A total of 245 surgical patients was interviewed with a complete response rate of 228(93.1%). Their age ranges from 18 to 87years, with a majority between 31 and 40 years. From a total respondent 120 (52.6%) were females, 171(75%) American Society of Anesthesiologist class-I, 137(60.1%) cannot read and write, and 108 (47.4%) were farmer. Majority 47(20.6%) of surgery was orthopedics surgery; followed by 25(11%) breast surgery, 23(10.1%) hysterectomy and others. One hundred twenty nine (56.6%) participants had suffered postoperative sore throat and 68 of them had had hoarseness of voices. The sore throat was found to be more common with certain patient, anesthetic and surgical related factors; difficulty level of intubation, duration of ETT in trachea, being not premedicated with opioid, unexperienced anesthetists, other than ketamine anesthetic  induction agent,  bleeding on tip of laryngoscope/ETT, perioperative hypotension and higher estimated blood loss during surgery. Significant incidence of postoperative sore throat and hoarseness of voice were seen during study period in the study area. Awareness creation on the predisposing factors and appropriate care especially during endotracheal intubation would help in reducing or avoiding the incidence of postoperative sore throat.

Key words: Endotracheal intubation, elective surgery, postoperative complications, sore throat.