Outcomes of early versus late irrigation and debridement of pediatric open long bone fractures

BACKGROUND Open long bone fractures are a major concern for pediatric patients due to the risk of surgical site infection(SSI).Early studies have recommended irrigation and debridement of open fractures within 6 hours-8 hours for the prevention of SSI.According to the American College of Surgeons(ACS)Best Practice Guidelines,in 2015,irrigation and debridement should be done within 24 hours.AIM To identify whether early irrigation and debridement,within 8 hours,vs late,between 8 hours and 24 hours,for pediatric open long bone fractures impacts rate of SSI.METHODS Using retrospective data review from the National Trauma Data Bank,Trauma Quality Improvement Project(TQIP)of 2019.TQIP database is own by the ACS and it is the largest database for trauma quality program in the world.Propensity matching analysis was performed for the study.RESULTS There were 390 pediatric patients with open long bone fractures who were incl-uded in the study.After completing propensity score matching,we had 176 patients in each category,irrigation and debridement within 8 hours and irrigation and debridement between 8 hours and 24 hours.We found no significant differences between each group for the rate of deep SSI which was 0.6%for patients who received surgical irrigation and debridement within 8 hours and 1.1%for those who received it after 8 hours[adjusted odd ratio(AOR):0.5,95%CI:0.268-30.909,P>0.99].For the secondary outcomes studied,in terms of length of hospital stay,patients who received irrigation and debridement within 8 hours stayed for an average of 3.5 days,and those who received it after 8 hours stayed for an average of 3 days,with no significant difference found,and there were also no sig-nificant differences found between the discharge dispositions of the patients.CONCLUSION Our findings support the recommendation for managing open long bone fractures from the ACS:Complete surgical irrigation and debridement within 24 hours.

Epidemiology of civilian blast injuries inflicted by terrorist bombings from 1970-2016

An upsurge of terrorist activity has occurred in the past two decades. As part of this, explosive devices continue to be extensively deployed against civilians in wide-ranging environments. Bombings remain the leading worldwide cause of civilian fatalities due to terrorism. This demands an understanding of modern terrorist bombing trends to inform mitigation strategy. The objective of this study was to identify the occurrence and severity of bombings against civilian targets in diverse attack settings, and to establish corresponding blast injury profiles. Data was obtained from analysis of the Global Terrorism Database(GTD) and a meta-analysis of blast injury data derived from the PubMed database. Closed environment explosions were associated with significantly greater(p<0.05) mortality than in open spaces. The injury profiles were found to be influenced by attack setting, with higher rates of primary injury on trains and buses, and secondary injury in open space.