Demography of orthopaedic admissions in a secondary care hospital in Oman.

 

Chowdipalya Maliyappa CHANDRASHEKARA, Mulamootil Abraham GEORGE, Bader Said Khamis AL-MARBOI

Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Al-Buraimi Hospital, OMAN

 

ABSTRACT

Introduction: There is noticeable rise in the number of orthopaedic admissions across the globe. However, there is a lack of published data on the types of injuries requiring admissions, especially in the Middle East region. We conducted this retrospective study to assess the demography of orthopaedic causalty admissions. Materials and Methods: The study included all orthopaedic admissions (n=424) from the Accident and Emergency Department (AED), Al-Buraimi Hospital between January 2010 and December 2012. Data were collected using electronic database of the hospital (Hospital Information Management System-HIMS). All the orthopaedic admissions from the outpatient department, elective cases and other surgical non-orthopaedic injuries admissions were excluded from the study. Results: Out of the 424 patients, 341 (80.4%) were male and 83 (19.6%) were female. The mean age of the patients was 29.9 years (range, 1-84 years). Road traffic accident (RTA) was the major cause of admissions (n=155, 36.6%).The other causes were domestic injuries (n=101, 23.8%), occupational injuries (n=74, 17.5%), sports injuries (n=37, 8.7%) and other injuries (n=57, 13.4%). Surgical treatment was required by 277 (65.3%) patients, while 147 (34.7%) patients were treated by non-operative methods such as plaster immobilisation. The mean duration of hospitalisation was 4.2 days (SD ± 0.2) and the mortality rate was 1.2% (n=5). The causes of death were hypotension due unstable pelvic fracture (n=1) and secondary sepsis (n=1, infected open fracture, and secondary lung sepsis (n=3). The mean duration of hospitalisation in these patients who died was 19.6 days (SD ± 16.4). Conclusions: Most of the orthopaedic casualty admissions were due to RTA injuries, followed by household and occupational injuries. There is a need for better preventive measures in order to reduce the burden on local health system.

 

Keywords: Demographic analysis, retrospective, orthopaedic, admissions

 

Correspondence author: Chandrashekara CM, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Al-Buraimi Hospital, Al-Buraimi, P.O.Box 8, Post Code 512, Oman. Tel: +96895846236. E mail: drshekar76@rediff.com

 

Brunei Int Med J. 2013; 9 (4): 236-242

 

 

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