Spectrum of Skull Fractures in Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

BACKGROUND Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a considerable cause of morbidity and mortality in India and around the world. Head injury provides one of the major contributions to death and better practical understanding of intracranial injuries is essential to the forensic expert. The cross sectional CT imaging makes the radiologic contribution to forensic autopsy more valuable and may improve accuracy of forensic investigation. To this reason we retrospectively evaluated the patterns of skull fractures on CT scan imaging of deceased patients. METHODSThis cross sectional analysis was conducted in the department of forensic medicine Career institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow over a period of two years 2013-2015. In this study, we reviewed images of all the deceased patients (died in our hospital) who underwent CT scanning at index admission for head injury. Demographic details and mode of injury was recorded from available data. Age was presented using mean and standard deviation, gender, mode of injury and type of skull fractures were presented as numbers and percentages. RESULTSLinear skull fractures were 172 out of which RTA due to unknown was 99 followed by fall of unknown reason was 32, RTA fall from two wheeler was 32. The cause of death in all these cases was due to head injury associated with fracture of skull or intracranial hemorrhages or brain injury. CONCLUSIONMajority of fatal head injuries are due to road traffic accidents (RTA) especially in younger and middle age, followed by fall from height. The common skull fracture type was linear (fissured) skull fractures followed by depressed fractures. Retrospective CT evaluated has reinforced reporting medico legal of these cases. KEYWORDSTraumatic brain injury (TBI), Road Traffic Accidents (RTA), Linear skull fractures, CT Scan. HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE:Singh BK. Spectrum of skull fractures in traumatic brain injury (TBI) -A cross sectional study.