Clinical Analysis of patients with Stab Wounds

Lee,  Hun Hyo; Choi,  Seung Hye; Yun,  Sang Seob; Lee,  Seong; Park,  Il Young; Park,  Seung Man; Lim,  Keun Woo

J Korean Soc Emerg Med > Volume 8(2); 1997 > Article

Original Article

Journal of The Korean Society of Emergency Medicine 1997;8(2): 242-251.

Clinical Analysis of patients with Stab Wounds

Hun Hyo Lee, Seung Hye Choi, Sang Seob Yun, Seong Lee, Il Young Park, Seung Man Park, Keun Woo Lim

ABSTRACT

The frequency of stab wounds is gradually increasing and patients with stab wounds visit the hospital through the emergency room. Management options for patients with stab wound include mandatory exploration and selective observation, but recently many authors have emphasized the importance of selective conservation with development of diagnostic procedure and controversy still exists concerning the management of patients with stab wounds. We retrospectively analysed the clinical data of 78 patients with stab wounds who visited the emergency room of St. Paul's Hospital over 5 years from January 1 1992 to December 31 1996. The following results were obtained. 1) The most prevalent age group were the twenties & the thirties(58.9% of patient) and then most patients were of young age. The male to female ratio was 2.9: 1. 2) Most injuries occurred at night between 8p.m. and 4a.m.(61.5%) and during September injuries were most frequent. 3) The most common causes of stab wound were fighting(55.1%) followed by suicide (21.8%), then accidents including traffic accidents(16.7%) and robbery(6.4%). 4) The instruments most commonly used were knives(53.8%) and broken glass(28.2%). 5) Half of patients were drunk from alcohol and in 3 cases from an antipsychotic drug. 6) In 11 cases(14.1%), there were multiple wound sites and in 8 cases(10.3%) superficial wounds into subcutaneous fatty tissue. 7) According to stab wound sites, the extremities were wounded in 36 cases(46.2%), chest in 21 cases(26.9%), abdomen in 15 cases(19.2%) and neck in 7 cases(9.0%). 8) Emergency explorations were performed in 43 cases(55.1%) under general or regional anesthesia, which included neck in 4 cases(9.3%), chest in 3 cases(7.0%), abdomen in 11 cases(25.6%) and extremity in 25 cases(58.1%). In exploratory laparotomy, negative exploration rate was 18.2%. 9) Death occurred in 2 cases(2.6%). One died due to sepsis with multiple colon perforation and the other due to hypovolemic shock with Superior Vena Cava injury.