Blast injuries of the hand and wrist: a 6-year experience

Abstract

Introduction Reckless use of fireworks, self-made bombs or careless behavior with military grade explosives can lead to debilitating hand and wrist structural injuries and burns. Aim To review and analyze common patterns, demographic data and results of blast hand and wrist trauma. Methods A retrospective study was conducted on patients treated in all Lithuanian hospitals and separately in Kaunas clinics. Demographic data was investigated in both all Lithuanian hospitals and Kaunas clinics but the more in-depth analysis on injured hand structures (bones, joints, tendons, arteries, nerves, skin) and treatment (wound dressing, primary sutures, fasciocutaneus wound covering, cross finger flaps) was performed only on patients treated in Kaunas clinics. Data from all Lithuanian hospitals were provided by the Lithuanian Institute of Hygiene [1]. Kaunas clinics data about the extent of injuries was obtained from physical and virtual patient medical histories provided by the department of statistics and archive of Kaunas clinics. Analysis was performed using SPSS 22.0 software package. Normality of data was checked by the Shapiro-Wilk and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Quantitative data were expressed as mean and interval (min-max values). Results From 1st January 2014 to 31st December 2019 a total of 387 patients suffered blast hand injuries in all Lithuania and Kaunas clinics combined. The most common cause of blast trauma was firework explosion in hand (78.81% of all blast related injuries). Throughout the years 143 of these patients were hospitalized in all Lithuanian hospitals, most of them in 2018 (n=50). 20.28% (n=29) of all hospitalized patients were children (<18 years). It was calculated that in whole country 26.61% (n=103) of all blast trauma patients were injured in the New Year period (from 31st December to 2nd of January). 53 blast hand trauma patients were treated in in the Kaunas clinics department of Plastic and reconstructive surgery. [...].