Relationship between Intracranial Lesions in Blunt Head Injuries and Different Parameters: A Six-Month Prospective Study at Ain Shams University Hospitals

Background: Head injuries (HIs) are a major threat to public health; they are significant risk factors for mortality in all age groups of population around the world and considered one of the major causes of road traffic accidents (RTAs) fatality. In Egypt, Policy-making to enhance community understanding of preventive and curative trauma programs is critical for reducing the impact of injuries. Aim: To assess the incidence, manner, cause, types, and outcome of blunt head injuries (BHI) in Ain Shams University Hospitals, and also, to study the correlation between the different types of intracranial lesions which were detected by computed tomography (CT) scan and these parameters. Methods and results: This study was conducted on 83 cases during a period of six months. There were 26 females and 57 males ranging from 2 years to 73 years. The most common cause was RTAs (67.5%) followed by falls (16.9%), and lastly blows (15.7%). The manner was mostly accidental and the time of inflection was mostly at night. The most common types of skull fractures were combined fractures (48.2%), followed by fissure vault (21.7%) then localized depressed fractures (14.5%), then comminuted (6%), and lastly fracture base and no fracture with the same percentage (4.8%).The most common types of intracranial lesions were combined (36.1%) followed by extradural hemorrhage (EDH) (19.3%) then brain laceration (13.3%), contusion, and subdural hemorrhage (SDH) (9.6%), intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) (8.4%), and lastly subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) (3.6%). Non-survivors represented 57.8% while survivors were 42.2%. Conclusion: Certain parameters such as age, sex, time etc, may contribute to catastrophic BHI and the relationship these parameters and intracranial lesions in blunt head injuries was studied. Combined fractures were the most prevalent type. Additionally, combined intracranial lesions were the most common type and the results indicated that the majority of the admitted cases were non-survivors.