Iı!ultiple Trauma (Part i); Evaluation of 200 patients with more than one major fracture

In order to compare the patients who have more than one major fracture, with the other multiple trauma patients, the records of 200 multiple traumatized patients, treated between January 1988-June 1995, were reviewed retrospectively. Existing orthopaedic injuries, treatment modalities and developing complications were analyzed. The average age, hospital stay and Modified Multiple Injury Severity Scale score of the patients were determined as follows respectively; 31.5 years (range, 5-84), 24.5 days (range, 2-116) and 27.6 points (range, 17-66). The most frequent sites of dislocations were hip, sacroiliac and elbow joints. There were alsa mostly tibial, femoral, costal and pelvic the obtained ratios and features, were found to be compatible with other studies. However, the rates of major vascular trauma (16%) type iii open fractures (54.4%), and fractures per patient (4.7) were quite high. In addition, our mortality rate was relatively low (%7.5), and 61 % of the Iate deaths were due to fat embolism. As a result, although there were same differences because of the abundance of orthopaedic injuries in our patients, the most significant finding, was the Iate deaths occurred generally due to fat embolism, rather than multiple organ system failure or sepsis.