An epidemiological study of acute hand injuries with soft tissue defects

Abstract

Objective To investigate the epidemiological characters of acute hand injures with soft tissue defects. Methods From January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2015, we investigated the patients accepted emergency operation in our hand surgery department, and screened out those who had soft tissue defects as the subjects to analyze. Results A total of 343 patients who had soft tissue defects were identified from 7 285 patients with acute hand injuries, accounting for 4.71%. The male to female ratio was 3.29:1, and the mean age was (39.3±14.0) years. Most of injuries happened in March to May and September to November. Crushing, cutting and twisted injures resulted in 92.1% soft tissue defects. The most of defects occurred in distal phalanx, and the incidence of the proximal part decreases gradually. Besides soft tissue defects, 48.7% patients had other associated injuries. 167 patients (48.7%) were treated with free skin grafting or thinning skin replantation, 129 (42.6%) patients were repaired by pedicled flaps and 35 (10.2%) patients were reconstructed by free skin flaps. Conclusion Acute hand injuries with soft tissue defects have the inherent epidemiological characters in gender, age and timing distributions. Repairing these defects is still one of the essential clinical tasks in hand surgery. Key words: Epidemiology; Hand injuries; Soft tissue defect