Pattern of chest injuries and treatment outcome in a nigerian teaching hospital

ABSTRACT

Chest injuries are a common type of injuries associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Its occurrence in all parts of the world with high impact on the productive age groups makes it important research area. To evaluate the pattern of chest injury with outcome of treatment in our centre. Retrospective review of patients' data and clinical information from January 2014 to December 2016 in the Surgical Out Patient Department of University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, Uyo, Nigeria. Over the three year period, 442 patients with diagnoses of chest injuries were included with age range 2years to 78years (mean=38.7years) and male female ratio of 3.51. Students, civil servants and motorcyclists/tricyclists operators and drivers were commonly affected (27.6%, 25.1%, 26.9% and 9.3%). Blunt chest injury was commoner than penetrating chest injury (69.7% vs 30.1%); while motor vehicular accident accounted for the majority of chest injury (55.% %) followed by assault (23.1%). Rib fracture was the commonest type of injury (85.5%) followed by haemothorax 29.3%, haemopeumothorax 25.6% and pneumothorax 9.5%. Associated injuries included fracture of upper and lower limb (3.4%), abdominal injury (3.4%) and head injury (2.8%). Majority (89.1%) of the patients were managed either conservatively or with tube thoracostomy with good outcome (96.4%) and mortality rate of 1.1%. Many clinical entities of chest injuries were treated with a low mortality figure of 1.1%