Current state of surgery and trauma in Mauritania: a Scoping Review

Introduction: Nearly one-third of the global burden of disease can be addressed through surgical care. Trauma forms a significant part of this burden, resulting in higher mortality than HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Mauritania, one of the largest countries in West Africa, lags significantly behind the sustainable development goals set by the World Health Organization (WHO). In this study, we reviewed the available literature on surgery and trauma in Mauritania. Methods: We conducted a literature review using the Embase database (from 1974) and Medline (from 1946) up to June 2024. All studies related to surgery and trauma in Mauritania were included. Studies focused solely on obstetrics, gynaecology and anaesthesia were excluded. Articles were screened for eligibility using Rayyan software. Results: The search strategy returned 449 abstracts. After manual de-duplication, 25 were removed. Following further screening, 411 articles were excluded. The final analysis included nine eligible full length articles and 2 conference abstracts. The 9 full length articles articles addressed a range of topics: emergency general surgery – ileal perforations (1), endocrine surgery spe