Effect of Covid-19 lockdown in trauma cases of Rural India

Abstract

Covid-19 has shocked the world and forced almost all the countries to a dumbfounded state. This virus has minimised the movement of humans, showing changes like never seen before. Positive effects have already been seen in nature and wildlife in the form of pollution control. The adverse effects of lockdown are seen as economic collapse. In this study, all the trauma patients coming to Acharya Vinobha Bhave Rural Hospital, Wardha were included irrespective of their age and mode of trauma. Period of two weeks before and two weeks after the initiation of lockdown in India from 23rd march 2020 have been taken into consideration. Both the outpatient and emergency patients were included in our study. We have observed a significant fall on overall trauma cases as expected due to the lockdown. There was a fall in the total number of cases by around three times. Our study showed that the demography of geriatric trauma, which remained almost the same and nearly all of them were old age females. Low-velocity trauma has shown an increase after lockdown from 42% to 64%, while the total numbers of cases are still less as compared to before the lockdown. High-velocity trauma cases have been reduced from 52% to 31% after lockdown, which indicates less road traffic-related injuries. During the lockdown, however, we have seen a significant fall in head neck and face trauma when compared to the upper limb and lower limb trauma.