Background

Globally there is increased trends of musculoskeletal injuries and fracture. It affects all populations groups, sexes, races, and in all geographical locations. Trauma is the leading causes of musculoskeletal injuries and the most affected countries are low and middle income countries including Tanzania. Also patients with traumatic musculoskeletal injuries either open or closed fractures contributes to large proportion among the patients seen in different health facilities and trauma or emergence department in Tanzania and other Sub-Saharan countries hence leads to significance burden in health sectors. This research report explains the prevalence of the patients older than 18 years admitted at KCMC orthopedic department from January to December 2015 with traumatic musculoskeletal injuries and other non-orthopedic injuries such as Head injuries, visceral injuries etc. It also explains socio demographic characteristics, age distribution by years, distribution of the injuries by body region, injury types e.g. closed or open fracture etc.

Objective:

To assess the prevalence of TMI (Traumatic Musculoskeletal Injuries) and nonorthopedic injuries among adult patients older than 18 years admitted at KCMC hospital orthopedic department from January 2015 to December 2015. Methodology: hospital based retrospective analytical study design was used in which systematic randomized sampling technique was used in sampling , whereby all patients’ files that met the criteria and were managed from January 2015 to December 2015 was used for data collection and recorded in a collection sheet. Data was entered in SPSS software for cleaning and analysis was using SPSS version 20. The analysis was done and presented in frequency tables and percentages using charts and tables.

Results:

In this study the total number of populations during the duration of study were 796 patients. These were those patients older than 18 years male and females admitted at the orthopedic department at KCMC hospital during the study duration. Among of 796 patients 610 of them had traumatic musculoskeletal injuries with or without other non-orthopedic injuries. Among 610 cases 453 were male and 157 female. With this total population and number of existing cases, the proportion of these cases was 76.63%. This is proportion of patients older than 18 years admitted at orthopedic department during the study period. Also in this study lower limbs was the most affected body region in musculoskeletal system in which 497(81.5%) of the total cases (610) had lower limb injuries followed by 135(22.1%) upper limb injuries. Spine injuries were 46(7.5%) cases. Of these total cases (610) with musculoskeletal injuries, fractures were 563 (92.3%) i.e. 340 closed fractures, 189 open fractures, and both open and closed fractures in same patient were 34. Dislocations were 309 (50.7%) of the total cases and 268 (43.9%) were soft tissue injuries in musculoskeletal system. In this study total non-orthopedic injuries was 69 (11.3%)of the total cases. 45 (7.4%) were traumatic head injuries, 10 (1.6%) were more than one non-orthopedic injuries on the same patient, 8 (1.3%) were thoracic/chest injuries, 6 (1%) were visceral/abdominal injuries.

Conclusion

This study shows that orthopedic injuries is the serious burden in orthopedic department at KCMC hospital since the study results shows that large proportion of patients admitted at the department had orthopedic injuries.Also study results shows that majority of the people who are affected are those who are economically productive hencethis can leadin developmental delay. Extremities are more affected organ followed by spine. Also patients with orthopedic injuries can accompanied with other fatal/severe non-orthopedic injuries like head injuries, chest injuries or abdominal injuries.Thisshows that there is the high need for the society to be kept aware on the injury burden specifically orthopedic injuries so that can learn on different preventive measures.