Factors Associated with Fracture and Its Outcome at Wolaita Sodo University Teaching and Referral Hospital, Wolaita Sodo, Southern Ethiopia.

Abstract

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) global burden of injury estimate ranks injury among the top ten leading cause of death. Despite the increasing trend suggested by available data, injuries in general and traumatic fractures in particular have not received the attention they deserve in most developing countries.Methods: the aim of this study is to assess the factors associated with fracture and its outcome at Wolaita Sodo University Teaching and Referral Hospital (WSUTRH), Wolaita Sodo, Southern Ethiopia. From September 2015- August 2016. A facility based cross sectional descriptive study was employed and a one year retrospective review of patient charts was undertaken. Data was collected using structured checklist by trained data collectors then cleaned and analyzed. Entry was done by Epi-data version1.4.4.0, & data analysis was done using SPSS version 20.Result: a total of 280 patients with traumatic fracture who presented during the study period were included in the study. The mean age of study subjects was 27.7(SD ±14.8) and male to female ratio was 2.3:1. Sixty three (22.5%) of patients developed complications either at admission or discharge and 31(11.1%) of patients discharged with long term disability. Mechanism of injury, nature of fracture, and presence of pre-hospital treatment were found to be associated with the development of complications at p<0.05. On multivariate logistic regression analysis, fractures due to machine and sharp injuries AOR=50.931(95% CI=5.088, 509.819) and patients who has visit to traditional healers AOR=24.621(95%CI=4.472, 135.552) has significantly higher risk of developing disability.Conclusion: Economically active age group of the population was main victims of the problem and males were more than two times affected than females. RTA was the commonest cause of fracture. Visit to traditional healer was significantly associated with increased risk of both complications and disability. Appropriate prevention strategies should be designed and implemented against road traffic accident, machine and sharp injuries and interpersonal violence.

Keywords: trauma, fracture, complications, disability