Burden of emergency pediatric surgical procedures on surgical capacity in Uganda: a new metric for health system performance.

Study of 1,930 pediatric surgical patients at two Ugandan referral hospitals reveals emergency operations consume over 60% of surgical capacity, creating significant backlogs for elective congenital repairs. Proposes novel metrics—emergency diversion-to-definitive repair ratios for colorectal malformations and emergency-to-elective ratios for inguinal hernias—to track surgical system performance in resource-limited settings.