Orthopaedic injuries in trauma patients, A nationwide register study including 37266 patients

Abstract

Purpose Trauma causes over 4 million annual deaths globally and accounts for over 10 % of the global burden of disease. Trauma patients often sustain multiple injuries in multiple organ systems. This study aims to investigate the incidence of orthopaedic injuries in adult trauma patients.MethodsThe study was a register-based study using data from the national Swedish trauma register – SweTrau. The inclusion criteria for the register are all patients with a trauma that activated the trauma team at the admitting hospital, or patients admitted without trauma team activation but with NISS (New Injury Severity Score) >15. By categorizing Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) codes into different orthopaedic injury types, we provided a detailed description of what types of orthopaedic injuries that occurred in trauma patients.ResultsA total of 37266 patients were included in the study. A total of 15246 (40%) patients had sustained any orthopaedic injury, and 7733 (51%) patients had more than one orthopaedic injury. Spine injuries were the most common type of injury affecting 19% (n= 7083) of all trauma patients, followed by injuries of the upper extremities (n=6273, 17%) and lower extremities (n=5943, 16%). Fractures were the domination type of orthopaedic injury (n=30755, 87%). Traffic injury was the most common injury mechanism with almost half (n= 18112, 49%) of the patients being admitted after some sort of traffic related incidentConclusionOrthopaedic injuries are common in trauma and occur in 40% of trauma patients. Slightly more than half of the patients with orthopaedic injury had ≥2 orthopaedic injuries.