Medicolegal Implications of Vascular Trauma: An Institutional Experience

Abstract

Background: Vascular trauma is one of the devastating types of injuries . Despite this fact, there is an obvious deficiencyin the educational sessions for vascular surgeons concerning the appropriate medicolegal dealing with such injuries.Aim: To highlight the role of vascular limb trauma during present scenario with the medicolegal and clinicalfindings.Methods: A 5 -years retrospective study with a follow up period of 2 years studying the data of peripheral vascularinjuries at three specialized trauma centre with special emphasize on the cause, the type, and the outcome of thistrauma . Obtained data were statistically analysed using the SPSS computer program (version 23).Results: This study included 1550 trauma patients (987 males and 563 females) who presented with peripheralvascular injuries. The patients’ age ranged from < 3 years to >70 years. There was a significant associationbetween the age and the circumstances of trauma. The most encountered causative mechanisms were trafficaccidents (45.7%) and firearms (21.7%). There was no significant association between outcome and age (p =0.114) or circumstances of trauma (p = 0.208). There was a highly significant association between the outcomeand the duration of hospital stay (p < 0.001). Lower limb injuries were higher in frequency than upper limbinjuries (n = 286 and 123) respectively. Upper and lower limbs arterial injuries had a significantly higherfrequency rate than the venous injuries. Ulnar artery and brachial vein injuries was the most frequentlyencountered upper limb arterial and venous trauma, while the femoral artery and the deep femoral vein werefound to be the most affected lower limb vessels. Bone injuries were the most frequently accompanying injuries(44.6% of total cases).Conclusion: As any sort of injury may possess medical and lawful perspectives, medicolegal investigations havevery important position when studying trauma cases, going hand in hand with the clinical aspect.