Burden, Treatment Patterns, and Functional Recovery of Hand Injuries in a Tertiary Hospital of Eastern India

This retrospective observational study was conducted to emphasize on epidemiological demographics and management of patients presenting with acute hand injuries to the Plastic Surgery and Emergency department and study the functional outcome of such injuries post-intervention.

The present observational study was conducted on 118 patients who had presented with hand injuries from July 2020 to December 2021 with the objectives to determine their demographic characteristics, their severity using hand injury severity scoring system. Functional outcome assessment was done using two-point discrimination for the sensory, while Purdue Pegboard Test and Jebsen-Taylor hand function test were used for the motor assessment of these patients.

In the present study, males were more affected than females (M: F = 5.5:1), with the majority of the patients sustained multiple injuries involving different components of the hand in 38.1% patients, and with the most common mode of injury being machine cut injuries in 40.7% patients (P < 0.049).

Since it was a prospective study, there was a major correlation between the gender and mode of injury, especially males getting more affected than females. The severity of hand injury showed a significant association with the functional outcome of the hand.