Abstract
Road traffic injuries are one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in developing countries including India and are a major health and social problem. Trauma affects generally the young people, and accounts for loss of more years of life. Greatest difficulty in their management lies in the timely diagnosis. This study was made on 340 victims of chest injuries, out of which 232 (68.23%) having thoraco-abdominal injuries, which were autopsied at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, Ranchi, Jharkhand during the period of August 2012 to July 2013
This is largely due to masking of thoracic trauma by associated injuries like abdominal trauma and bony injury. In Ranchi, vehicular accidents are one of the most common contributory factors to the thoraco-abdominal trauma. The objective of the present study was to analyze the pattern of thoraco-abdominal injuries in fatal road traffic accidents and find out the measures for the prevention. The study shows that, deaths are more in the age group of 31 to 45 years (39.41%), Males (84.71%) are more vulnerable than females (15.29%). Most of the deceased are riders (60%). Thoraco-abdominal region involvement in any form of blunt force trauma can be related to the anatomical location of this region which makes it easily susceptible to impact by a wide variety of reasons like road traffic accidents, railway accidents, industrial mishap, assault, fall from height etc. Thoraco-abdominal injuries provides a major contribution to death because the bony thoracic cage contains vital organs of circulation and respiration and trauma to these organs challenges the integrity and viability of entire human body, similarly abdomen is the third commonest region of body that is injured in civilian trauma, as human abdomen is largely unprotected by bony structure which contains numerous important vital organs like liver, spleen, kidney, pancreas and hollow viscous like stomach, intestines and urinary bladder etc. Road traffic accident is most common cause of death below the age of 50 years because males are usually the earning members of the families.
Keywords: Thoraco-abdominal injuries, Blunt trauma, Road traffic injuries, pattern.
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DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18535/jmscr/v5i5.166
