ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effect of demographic and occupational factors on the severity of the acute occupational hand injuries. METHODS: Patients with acute hand injuries presenting to the emergency department of the Ege university hospital between 01.08.2008 and 27.02.2009 were included. A questionnaire investigating demographic and occupational factors of the patients and their injuries was filled out for each patient. Modified Hand Injury Severity Score (MHISS) was used to assess the severity of the injury. RESULTS: A total of 144 subjects were included. Forty-three patients had occupational hand injuries. Age at injury, occupation, and main earning status did not alter the MHISS score significantly. Also, the mechanism of injury, occupational experience, timing of the injury, glove use, safety training did not have a significant effect on the injury severity. The injury pattern was found to have a statistically significant effect on the MHISS score. CONCLUSION: The potentially modifiable factors such as the working conditions, safety training and use of gloves are important in the etiology of occupational acute hand injury. Most probably, in this study the size of the sample was not large enough to be able to demonstrate any relation between these and the injury severity. However, attempts to modify these factors by various strategies may reduce the incidence of acute hand injury at work. Precautions and widespread educational programs can prevent occupational acute hand injury.
Subject(s)
Hand Injuries/etiology , Occupational Injuries/etiology , Adolescent , Adult , Aged , Child , Child, Preschool , Female , Gloves, Protective , Humans , Infant , Injury Severity Score , Male , Middle Aged , Risk Assessment , Risk Factors , Safety Management , Young AdultABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Although magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a valuable method in staging musculoskeletal tumors, it may not give enough information on the association between the tumor and the main vascular structures adjacent to the tumor. In this respect, computed tomographic angiography (CTA) may be a useful alternative imaging technique. PURPOSE: To evaluate the effectiveness of CTA in determining vascular invasion in patients with musculoskeletal tumors and suspected vascular invasion by MRI, and to correlate the CTA findings with the surgical findings. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Twenty patients who had musculoskeletal tumors and lacked a fat plane between the tumor and adjacent vessels by MRI were included in this study. All patients were evaluated with CTA, and the CTA findings were reviewed by two radiologists to determine the presence of vascular invasion. Statistical analysis was carried out by using surgical findings as the gold standard. RESULTS: There were nine women and 11 men (mean age 31 years) with either bone (n=9) or soft-tissue (n=11) tumors. Twelve patients without invasion according to the CTA examination were also surgically negative (true-negative cases). Of the eight patients with invasion shown by CTA, only three had adhesions and were considered surgically negative (false-positive cases). Five had invasions proven by surgery and were considered surgically positive (true-positive cases). Compared to the surgical findings, CTA had 100% sensitivity, 80% specificity, 62.5% positive predictive value, 100% negative predictive value, and 80% accuracy. CONCLUSION: CTA is a more accurate imaging technique than MRI in evaluating vascular invasion of musculoskeletal tumors, and provides valuable preoperative data.
