Retrospective analysis of acute hand injuries in an academic tertiary hospital that need plastic surgeon consultation

Background: Hand surgery covers a major area of plastic surgery practice. To our knowledge, there is no publication directly investigating the characteristics of hand injuries that plastic surgery consultation was requested, which could be an essential information to guide the plastic surgery education programs. This study determined the features of the hand injuries presented to the plastic surgery department during a year from an academic trauma hospital in Turkey. Methods: Epidemiological information of the patients with hand injuries who were admitted to the emergency department of an academic tertiary hospital and needed plastic surgery consultation was evaluated. Patients were analyzed retrospectively in terms of gender, distribution of age, occupation, mechanism of injury, cause of injury, injured soft tissue structures, and duration of hospitalization. Results: One thousand and forty-three (83.7 %) of the 1246 patients included in the study were male and 203 (16.3 %) were female. The mean age of patients was 32. The most common injured structure were the tendons with a rate of 41.2 %. The tendons were followed by fractures, tissue defects, nail injuries, nerve injuries, and vascular injuries with a rate of 18.8, 16.6, 10, 8.3, and 5.3 %, respectively. The most frequent mechanism of injury was crush type (38.6 %) followed by blunt cut (26.9 %), sharp cut (25.9 %), combined (4.8 %), and avulsion injuries (3.8 %). 7.8 % of the patients with hand injuries had amputations. Conclusions: Despite the limitations, our study can reflect emergency hand injuries that a plastic surgeon may be faced within a tertiary care center. By our work, a plastic surgeon will be aware of demographic features of a patient with a hand injury presented by the emergency department. Level of Evidence: Level IV, risk/prognostic.