Fingertip injury, is it a minor injury?

ABSTRACT

To study the financial and medical impact of fingertip injury. To call attention to fingertip injuries that are often neglected and overlooked as minor injuries and to review possible ways of reducing its incidence. Design: Retrospective Setting: Al- Razi Orthopaedic Hospital, Occupational Health Department, Kuwait. Subject/method: A retrospective study of those patients with fingertip injury who attended the hand surgery clinic and made workman's compensation claims during the year 2000. Sixty hundred and thirty adult patients were t reated for acute fingertip injury. Four hundre d ninetyeight patients made official compensation claims. Cost per patient was 1175 Kuwaiti Dinars [KD], with a total annual cost of KD 623,527. The average sick leave period per patient was 30 days. Fingertip injury is medically and economically an expensive injury to the patient, employer, and society