Demographic Profile of Hand Injuries in North India: A Tertiary Care Hospital Experience.

Abstract

Introduction: Hand injuries are the most complex injuries when compared to other bodily injuries. A better understanding of the biological, behavioral, and socioeconomic risk factors that are associated with hand injuries is therefore needed. This data can help identify individuals at risk and define preventive measures to help reduce the incidence.
 Material and Methods: We present a study of 350 consecutive patients of hand injury treated between 2017- 2018. The demographic profile of the patient along with the type & cause of the injury sustained, hand dominance, type of procedure, and requirement of hospital administration was extracted from hospital records.
 Results: 159 (45.5%) of the patients were in the age group of fewer than 20 years. Out of the 350 patients, 288 (82%) were male. 302 (86%) patients were right-handed. The most common mode of injury was machine injury in 205 (59%) patients. 181 (52%) patients had crush injury, 107 (31%) had the sharp cut injury, and 32 (9%) had blast injury. 94 (27%) patients needed hospital admission for management. 119 ( 34%) patients had the injury to the thumb, 89 (25%) had injury to the middle finger. Primary suturing was done in 116 (33%) patients, tendon and nerve repair in 209 (60%), and 177 (51%) patients respectively.
 Conclusions: The study describes the demography and etiology of the cases of hand injury. The study has a limitation of having absence of assessment of functional outcome. There is a necessity of hand trauma registry to quantify the burden of hand injuries and formulate a prevention strategy at the national level.