TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2011//
TI  - Isolated hand injuries on operational deployment: an examination of epidemiology and treatment strategy
JO  - Military medicine
A1  - Penn-Barwell, Jowan G.
A1  - Bennett, Philippa M.
A1  - Powers, Dominic
A1  - Standley, David
SP  - 1404
EP  - 1407
VL  - 176
IS  - 12
N2  - This study presents an analysis of 6 years of isolated hand injuries repatriated from Afghanistan or Iraq. Of a total of 6,337 medical cases evacuated back to the United Kingdom, 414 (6.5%) cases were identified as hand injuries; from these exclusions were: 207 who did not return to Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, 12 who were incorrectly coded, 1 was an old injury, and 41 whose notes were unavailable. The notes of the remaining 153 patients were reviewed: only 9% had battle injuries; nearly half involved fractures; overall, 73% required surgery, a total of 171 surgical episodes, a third of these operations occurred in deployed facilities. Patients with primary nerve or tendon repairs in deployed medical facilities had a trend toward significantly worse outcomes than those whose primary repair was delayed until repatriation. This study supports the current recommendation of delaying tendon and nerve repair until repatriation.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0026-4075
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/
ID  - ref1
ER  -