Aetiological profile of nasal trauma in Ilorin North-Central Nigeria

The nose being the most prominent part of the face is easily traumatized in facial injuries and these has been found to be common among the Caucasians compared to the Africans and Asians. The aim is to highlight the Aetiological profile of nasal trauma in Ilorin north-central Nigeria.

A prospective study was carried out at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital Ilorin, Ilorin, north central Nigeria over a period of one and half years of all trauma cases seen at the A/E department of the hospital and those with nasal trauma were further studied. The data retrieved include demographic data, clinical presentation, and timing of presentation, examination findings, intervention offered and the outcome. Data were entered into SPSS 11.0 and analyzed descriptively.

A total of one hundred and six (106) patients with nasal trauma were seen during the study period with a prevalence rate of 7%. The age range 6 months to 65 years with the majority of the patients in the age range 21-34 years (35.8%). The Male to female ratio was 1.7:1.0 and most patients were students (28.3%), followed by the traders (22.6%) the least were children (8.5%).Road traffic injury (RTI) constituted the highest cause of the nasal trauma (57.5%),assaults (17%), falls from heights (8.5%) and others were 17%.Majority of the patients presented within 1-6 hours of occurrence of the injury (61.3%) and only 24.5% presented less than an hour of the incidence. The common forms of presentation were epistaxis (40.6%), nasal lacerations and epistaxis (25.5%) and nasal fractures in only 10.4%. Involvement of both the passengers and the pedestrians was (57.5%) and most of them, 44.3% had surgical intervention and 40.6% had conservative treatment with a mortality rate of 0.9%.

The pievalence of nasal trauma.is 7% with RTI being the commonest cause in nearly two thirds of cases and cases of assaults only accounted for 17%.The commonest forms of presentation were epistaxis,nasal lacerations and nasal fractures in that order and most of them were surgically treated. Measures should be adopted to reduce incidence of RTI, with regulations enforced to protect pedestrians most of whom were the victims of these injuries.