Volume 23 · Issue 03 · 2020

Injury continues to be an important cause of morbidity and mortality in both developed and developing countries. Globally, it is responsible for approximately 5.8 million deaths per year and 91% of these deaths occur in developing countries. Road traffic collision, suicides and homicides are the leading cause of traumatic deaths. Despite the fact that traumatic chest injury is being responsible for 10% of all trauma-related hospital admissions and 25% of trauma-related deaths across the world including in Ethiopia, only few published studies showed the burden of traumatic chest injury in Ethiopia. So, this study aims at assessing the characteristics and outcome of traumatic chest injury patients visited Tikur Anbesa Specialized Hospital (TASH) over one year period.

A single center based retrospective study was done. We collected data from patients’ records to assess characteristics and outcome of traumatic chest injury at TASH over one year period. All patients diagnosed with traumatic chest injury and received treatment at the hospital from January 1 to December 31, 2016 regardless of its types and severity levels were included in the study. Patients with incomplete medical records for at least 20% of the study variables and without detailed medical history, or patients died before receiving any health care were excluded from the study. The collected data were cleaned and entered into Epidata version 3.1 and exported to SPSS Version 21.0 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine factors associated with outcome of trau- matic chest injury patients.

A total of 192 chest injury patients were included in the study and about one-fourth of chest injury victims were died during treatment period in TASH. Road traffic collision (RTC) was the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among traumatic chest injury victims. Age of the victims (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 8.9, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.51-53.24), time elapsed between the occurrence of traumatic chest injury and admission to health care facilities (AOR 4.6, 95% CI 1.19-18.00), length of stay in hospital (AOR 0.12, 95% CI 0.02-0.58), presence of multiple extra-thoracic injury (AOR 25, 95% CI 4.18-150.02) and development of complications (AOR 23, 95% CI 10-550) were factors associated with death among traumatic chest injury patients in this study.

RTC contributed for a considerable number of traumatic chest injuries in this study. Old age, delay in delivering the victim to health care facilities, length of stay in hospital, and development of atelectasis and pneumonia were associated with death among traumatic chest injury patients. Road safety interventions, establishment of organized pre-hospital services, and early recognition and prompt management of traumatic chest injury related complications are urgently needed to overcome the underlying problems in the study setting.

The blunt abdominal trauma (BAT) is a common emergency and is significantly associated with morbidity and mortality. Our study was conducted to achieve the goal that a new scoring system could be used for the BAT patients.

The statistical population of this study was 1000 patients with BAT referred to emergency department of Imam Hossein Hospital, Tehran, Iran. Sampling was carried out in a convenience non-random manner and continued to reach the required sample size. All the patients with BAT due to road traffic accidents, falls, and other direct blunt traumas such as punctures and kickbacks were included in the study. Exclusion criteria were after 3 months of pregnancy, under the age of 18, warfarin taking, no reliable medical history providing and penetrating trauma. The study questionnaire was based on BAT scoring system. The data were analyzed by SPSS V20 software. The receiver operating characteristic curve was used to analyze the effectiveness of the new scoring system in predicting the BAT patients’ outcome.

The mean age of the patients (n = 1000) was (35.79 ± 13.09) years. The mean score of patients was (6.29 ± 5.80). Based on this scoring system, the patients were divided into three categories. The first group was patients at low risk with score of less than 8, the second group was patients at moderate risk with score of 8-12 and the third group was patients at high risk with score of 12-24. The score of 661 (66.1%) patients were low, 109 (10.9%) were moderate and 230 (23%) had a high score. The association between hip fracture and abdominal tenderness with abdominal injury was significant (p < 0.001). Cronbach's alpha was 0.76 showing the reliability of this questionnaire to predict the future of patients.

The study tool has a sensitivity to predict the BAT patients’ outcome, and has a proper specificity that can be used to reduce the use of harmful modalities such as computed tomography scan.

Successful application experiences on public-private partnership (PPP) in different countries, suggest that PPP could be an option in road traffic injury (RTI) prevention. The present study aims at investigating the applicability of PPP policy in RTI prevention in Iran based on the experts’ perspectives.

This is a qualitative study with grounded theory approach which has been conducted in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran in 2018. The participants were 22 experts in the field of RTIs selected using purposive sampling method. Data were collected by semi-structured interviews and analyzed with content-analysis method.

The results were classified under 5 main themes (applicability, scopes and services, challenges, advantages, and strategies) for applying PPP policy and 37 sub-themes. Due to the prevalence of RTIs, the present challenges in public sector, existence of qualified private sector, and successful experiences in other areas, there are opportunities for private sector partnership in prevention of RTIs. Private sector could participate in different scopes and services regarding RTI prevention, including road construction and maintenance, maintenance and provision of vehicles safety and public education. The main challenges including legislation issues, ambiguities in collaboration, political and organizational unsustain-ability, government's financial hardship and lack of experienced experts in the field of RTI. However, there are significant advantages including high efficiency in program implementation, covering the weaknesses of public sector, effective and efficient management on application of PPP in RTI prevention. The strategies include identifying and prioritizing the assignable activities, identifying the qualified private sector, developing PPP policies and legal frameworks, creating a common language between public and private parties, trying to meet the expectations of the private sector by public sector, developing a comprehensive and sound contract, and cultivating public culture to accept private sector in the field of RTI prevention.

This study sought to determine whether PPP could be used as strategy to reduce the burden of RTIs in Iran. But it requires a lot of preliminary studies to provide the context and conditions for applying this policy.

Road traffic accidents (RTAs) are a public health issue and cost a lot to individuals, families, communities and nations. Trauma care systems in India are at a nascent stage of development. There is gross disparity between trauma services available in various parts of the country. Rural area in India has inefficient services for trauma care, due to the varied topography, financial constraints, and lack of appropriate health infrastructure. The present study is to study the trends of occurrence of RTA cases by month, week and time of accident occurrence as well as to research the types of vehicle involved in accidents and other various risk factors related to them.

During 1st January 2017 to 31st December 2017, a hospital-based and cross-sectional study of RTA victims was conducted. The patients were admitted in emergency department of Uttar Pradesh University of Medical Sciences, Saifai, Etawah, when stabilized, they were shifted to the orthopaedics and surgery ward.

In the study, 654 road accident victims were included, of which the majority were males (77.5%) and the most of them belonged to rural (67%). RTA victims according to the month of occurrence majority were found in January (12.5%) and evening was time of a day with maximum accidents (32.1%). Mortality cases of RTA victims based on type of road user and it shows decreasing trend of mortality of motor-cyclists (54.2%) followed by pedestrian (25.1%).

There should be control over people driving vehicles under the influence of alcohol and drivers over-speeding and rash driving on urban roads as well as rural village roads.

To investigate the effect of early enteral nutrition on outcomes of trauma patients in the intensive care unit (ICU).

Clinical data of trauma patients in the ICU of Daping Hospital, China from January 2012 to December 2017 was retrospectively analyzed, including patient age, gender, injury mechanism, injury severity score (ISS), nutritional treatment, postoperative complications (wound infection, abdominal abscess, anastomotic rupture, pneumonia), mortality, and adverse events (nausea, vomiting, abdominal distention). Only adult trauma patients who developed bloodstream infection after surgery for damage control were included. Patients were divided into early enteral nutrition group (<48 h) and delayed enteral nutrition group (control group, >48 h). Data of all trauma patients were collected by the same investigator. Data were expressed as frequency (percentage), mean ± standard deviation (normal distribution), or median (Q₁, Q₃) (non-normal distribution) and analyzed by Chi-square test, Student's t-test, or rank-sum test accordingly. Multiple logistic regression analysis was further adopted to investigate the significant variables with enteral nutrition.

Altogether 876 patients were assessed and 110 were eligible for this study, including 93 males and 17 females, with the mean age of (50.0 ± 15.4) years. Traffic accidents (46 cases, 41.8%) and fall from height (31 cases, 28.2%) were the dominant injury mechanism. There were 68 cases in the early enteral nutrition group and 42 cases in the control group. Comparison of general variables between early enteral nutrition group and control group revealed significant difference regarding surgeries of enterectomy (1.5% vs. 19.0%, p = 0.01), ileum/transverse colon/sigmoid colostomy (4.4% vs. 16.3%, p = 0.01) and operation time (h) (3.2 (1.9, 6.1) vs. 4.2 (1.8, 8.8), p = 0.02). Other variables like ISS (p = 0.31), acute physiology and chronic health evaluation≥20 (p = 0.79), etc. had no obvious difference. Chi-square test showed a much better result in early enteral nutrition group than in control group regarding morality (0 vs. 11.9%, p = 0.03), length of hospital stay (days) (76.8 ± 41.4 vs. 81.4 ± 44.7, p = 0.01) and wound infection (10.3% vs. 26.2%, p = 0.03). Logistic regression analysis showed that the incidence of wound infection was related to the duration required to achieve the enteral nutrition standard (OR = 1.095, p = 0.002). Seventy-six patients (69.1%) achieved the nutritional goal within a week and 105 patients (95.5%) in the end. Trauma patients unable to reach the enteral nutrition target within one week were often combined with abdominal infection, peritonitis, bowel resection, intestinal necrosis, intestinal fistula, or septic shock.

Early enteral nutrition for trauma patients in the ICU is correlated with less wound infection, lower mortality, and shorter hospital stay.

An injury surveillance information system (ISIS) collects, analyzes, and distributes data on injuries to promote health care delivery. The present study aimed to review the data elements and functional requirements of this system.

This study was conducted in 2019. Studies related to injury surveillance system were searched from January 2000 to September 2019 via the databases of PubMed, Web of Knowledge, ScienceDirect, and Scopus. Articles related to the epidemiology of injury, population survey, and letters to the editor were excluded, while the review and research articles related to ISISs were included in the study. Initially 324 articles were identified, and finally 22 studies were selected for review. Having reviewed the articles, the data needed were extracted and the results were synthesized narratively.

The results showed that most of the systems reviewed in this study used the minimum data set suggested by the World Health Organization injury surveillance guidelines along with supplementary data. The main functions considered for the system were injury track, data analysis, report, data linkage, electronic monitoring and data dissemination.

ISISs can help to improve healthcare planning and injury prevention. Since different countries have various technical and organizational infrastructures, it is essential to identify system requirements in different settings.

Trauma is a major health concern. Length of hospital stay (LOS) has been targeted as an important metric to assess trauma care. This study aims to evaluate the risk factors that affect LOS among trauma patients in a trauma center in Southwestern Iran.

This cross-sectional study was conducted on patients admitted to Rajaee Trauma Center, Shiraz, Iran between January 1, 2018 and December 30, 2018. The inclusion criteria were age above 15 years and having traffic accident injuries, including car, motorcycle and pedestrian injury mechanisms. The exclusion criteria were existing diseases including cardiovascular, cerebral, renal, and pulmonary diseases prior to this study, dead upon arrival or within 48 h after admission, and stay at the hospital for less than 6 h. The risk variables analyzed for prolonged LOS were age, gender, mechanism of traffic accident injury, infection during hospital stay, type of injury, injury severity score, surgery during hospitalization, and survival. Poisson regression was performed to evaluate the partial effects of each co- variate on trauma hospitalization (≥3 days as longer stay).

This study was conducted on 14,054 patients with traffic accident injury and the mean age was (33.89 ± 15.78) years. Additionally, 74.35% of the patients were male, with male to female ratio of 2.90. The result of Poisson regression indicated that male patients, higher age, combination of thoracic injuries, onset of infected sites, and surgery patients were more susceptible to have a longer LOS. Considering the site of injury, patients with face injuries followed by those with thorax injuries had the highest means of LOS (3.74 days and 3.36 days, respectively). Simultaneous existence of surgical inter- vention and infection in a patient had the greatest impact on prolonged LOS.

This study identified that age, gender, mechanism of injury, infection, type of injury, survival, and ISS could lead to prolongation of LOS, but the affect can be reduced by eliminating modifiable risk factors.

Pelvic fracture evaluation with abdominopelvic computed tomography (CT) and formal CT cystography for rule out of urine bladder injury have been commonly employed in pediatric trauma patients. The additional delayed imaging required to obtain optimal CT cystography is, however, associated with increased doses of ionizing radiation to pelvic organs and represent a significant risk in the pediatric population for future carcinogenic risk. We hypothesized that avoidance of routine CT cystography among pediatric pelvic fracture victims would not result in an appreciable rate of missed bladder injuries and would aid in mitigating the radiation exposure risk associated with these additional images.

A retrospective cohort study involving blunt trauma pelvic fractures among pediatric trauma patients (age<14) between the years 1997 and 2016 was conducted utilizing the Israeli National Trauma Registry. Statistical analysis was performed using SAS statistical software version 9.4 via the tests of Chisquare test and two-sided Fisher's exact test. A p value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

A total of 1072 children were identified from the registry for inclusion. Mean age of patients was 7.7 years (range 0-14) and 713 (66.5%) were male. Overall mortality in this population was 4.1% (44/1072). Only 2.1% (23) of pediatric patients with pelvic fractures had bladder injury identified, with just 9 children having intraperitoneal bladder rupture (0.8% of all the patients).

The vast majority of blunt pediatric trauma victims with pelvic fractures do not have urine bladder injuries. Based on our study results we do not recommend the routine utilization of CT cystography in this unique population.