Management of chilhood abdominal masses by nigerian traditional doctors: a worrisome cause of delay in presentation

Abdominal masses are very common in Nigeria. These have been managed by traditional doctors even before the advent of orthodox medications. Traditional doctors are however, not able to distinguish between the various causes of abdominal swellings, hence all are diagnosed and managed as splenomegaly [ude]. Their modes of treatment are scarification, tattooing and concoction application in different combinations. We retrospectively studied twenty two patients who were mismanaged by traditional doctors before presenting to us at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin City-Nigeria. They all presented very late with life threatening complications and advanced diseases. Treatment offered on presentation included wound dressing, resuscitation, blood transfusion, antibiotics and laparotomy with resection of the masses, depending on diagnoses. These could only salvage 13[59.1%] of the patients while a high mortality of 9[40.9%] was recorded. The need to improve on our health care delivery system is stressed