Estimations and analysis of medical waste amounts in the city of Istanbul and proposing a new approach for the estimation of future medical waste amounts

The goal of this work was to estimate the yearly total medical waste amounts for hospitals and other healthcare institutions, and yearly averages of daily unit medical waste amounts per hospital bed using the data from medical waste collection, treatment and disposal establishments for last 18 years in Istanbul, Turkey. The estimations were based on the number of medical waste bags that were collected from hospitals and healthcare institutions and then transferred to either a medical waste incinerator or to an autoclave sterilization facility in Istanbul during the last 18 years. Hospitals were divided into 5 categories; dialysis, specialty, educational state university and state hospitals, non-educational state and non-educational private hospitals. Specialty hospitals were psychiatry, physical therapy, eye, dermatology, women care, child care, occupational diseases and lung hospitals. Results from this study indicate that the yearly total estimated medical waste amounts from hospitals have increased from approximately 5307 tonnes in 2000 to 22,755 tonnes in 2017. The yearly averages of daily unit medical waste amounts per hospitals bed have increased from 0.43 kg/bed-day in 2000 to 1.68 kg/bed-day in 2017. The other goal of this work was to propose and show a new (novel) relationship between the yearly estimated medical waste amounts and daily generation rates and yearly populations for the estimation of future medical waste amounts. Simple statistical evaluations of the estimated data were done and equations of the approximated linear lines were obtained. These evaluations indicated strong matches with the points of estimations. High degree of coefficients of determinations also showed strong relationships between variances. These figures and equations can be used for the estimation of future trends in order to facilitate better medical waste management practices.