Peculiar demographic and risk factors in traumatic brain injury in a tertiary institution in Nigeria: 4-year study

Background: Trauma to the head has lately become more important, mostly, when there is associated brain injury, and the incidence is not decreasing. The Accident and Emergency Unit, being the first point of contact in the hospital for these cases, remains a reliable data pool for evaluating them. This study aims at reviewing the peculiar demographic and risk factors of traumatic brain injuries presenting in the Emergency Unit of our institution in order to compare them with previous publications.Cases and Methods: This is a retrospective study of all cases diagnosed with traumatic brain injury in the Accident and Emergency Unit of our institution during a 4-year period; January 2007– December 2010. Data was collected from the Accident and Emergency records, collated and analyzed.Results: A total of 14,332 cases presented within the study period, and 1,094 had traumatic brain injury. Most (77.8%) were male, and peak age incidence (31.1%) was in the >21-30year group, with motorcycle related accidents accounting for 57.7%, and mortality rate of 5.4% representing 103 per 100,000 per year.Conclusion: The major demographic and risk factors in our environment include the male gender, motorcycle riding, young active age and active daytime period. Most of these factors correlated with findings from previous studies, but the incidence and mortality rates in our environment remain much higher than in developed countries.Keywords: Active age, daytime, head trauma, male, motorcycle riding

Conservative Management Of Third Trimester Cervical Spinal Cord Injury Using Gardner-Wells\' Tongs Traction

Spinal cord injury, though an important cause of morbidity appears to be uncommon in pregnant women or perhaps, has not been accurately documented among them. Superimposed on the many impairments resulting from spinal cord injury is the presence of the foetus in the womb, which in itself normally brings about intense physiological alterations in the patient. Despite the complexities, neither the pregnancy nor the spinal cord injury needs jeopardize the optimal care of the other as long as the standard protocols are followed. In the past 10 years, the University college Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria treated approximately 900 spinal cord injury patients, and only 3 of these were pregnant-an incidence of 0.30 per 90 patients per year, or 0.33%. We report here, the conservative management of one of these pregnant patients using the Gardner-Wells\' tongs traction, resulting in normal parturition and full neurological recovery. Key Words: Spinal cord injury, Third trimester pregnancy, Gardner-Wells\' tongs traction Nigerian Journal of Clinical Practice Vol 8(1) 2005: 46-5