Central Nervous System Complications in Civilians’ Blast – Induced Head Injuries
Keywords:
Explosive injuries, Bomb blast injuries, penetrating brain injuries, Traumatic brain injury, warfare injuries.Abstract
Objective: To evaluate the frequency of central nervous system complications in civilians with explosive related head injuries.
Material and Methods: This observational study was conducted at Neurosurgery Department, Post Graduate Medical Institute, Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar – Pakistan, from January 2009 to December 2011 (3 years). We included all the patients with explosive related head injuries who were hospitalized, of all age groups and both genders, and excluded those patients who died before hospitalization. We also excluded patients with head injuries having neurovascular complications or had neurological deficit.
Results: We had total of 191 patients with bomb blast head injuries treated in Lady Reading Hospital. One sixty six (86.9%) patients were male and 25 (13.1%) female with male / female ratio of 6.6:1. Their age ranged from 2 months of 71 years. Almost 65% of the patients were in their 2nd, 3rd and 4th decades of life. The common CNS complications in our patients were infections (12.04%), cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak (8.38%), epilepsy (5.2%) and post-traumatic hydrocephalous (3.7%). Mortality rate was 11%.
Conclusion: We conclude from this study that central nervous system infections are the common (12.04%) complication of civilian explosive related head injuries followed by cerebrospinal fluid leak, seizures and hydro-cephalous respectively. Over all morbidity is 29.32% and mortality rate is 11% in those head injured patients who reach to hospital.
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