Introduction:
It is estimated that more than 2 million young women currently live with untreated obstetric fistulas in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. There are about 50,000 to 100,000 new cases per year, and approximately 150,000 women in Uganda alone are currently living with this condition.1–3 Although surgical fistula repairs are commonly preformed and relatively safe, some of the complications include bowel obstruction, fistula recurrence, and urinary incontinence.4,5. A rare complication of fistula surgery is hemorrhaging, accounting for 3% of all complications.6 However, this can be serious and life-threating as access to safe blood for women in low-resource settings can be challenging. Therefore, it is important to understand potential risk factors for perioperative transfusions to allow for proper planning and risk mitigation among high-risk women. There is currently a paucity of information in the literature on this topic. Therefore, we aim to identify the incidence of and risk factors for perioperative blood transfusions after urogenital fistula repair at a Fistula Hospital in Uganda. We hypothesize there will be specific patient characteristics that will increase risk of perioperative transfusions such as location of fistula and route of surgery.