Description of traumatic skull fractures and brain Hemorhage as seeen at postmortem in Mulago National Referral Hospital Mortuary.

Abstract

Head injuries are commonly associated with fatal traumatic injuries seen at autopsy. At autopsy, a spectrum of injuries is observed these are always distributed in a varying degree between age and gender. Nowadays, the term “head injury” has been replaced by the new term “traumatic brain injury (TBI).” TBI is defined as a “cerebral insult, not of degenerative or congenital nature but due to external mechanical force. This study was conducted to describe the pattern of traumatic skull fractures and brain hemorrhage as seen at autopsy.A study was done on autopsies performed at Mulago National Referral Hospital between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2022. It involved both qualitative and quantitative methods to identify the characteristics as well as determine the distribution of fatal traumatic brain hemorrhages and skull fractures. For the purpose of this research, only the autopsy reports archived in the department were used. I recruited autopsy cases conducted at Mulago National Referral Hospital's mortuary that met my inclusion criteria during the study period. The autopsy reports of 110 cases were reviewed, of which 14 (12.73%) were Females and 96 (87.27%) were Males. Basilar fracture had the least frequency of all skull fractures (8) cases, whereas temporal fracture was the most frequent of skull fractures 25 cases. This temporal skull fracture has a petrous part of the skull and makes it a weak point and prone to fracture during trauma. Petrous fracture has been found to be associated with intracranial hemorrhages by other studies (ashaari, 2012) SAH was the most frequent intracranial hemorrhage (49.54%) and the least frequent of ICH was EDH (22.73%). The high incidence of men having more traumatic head injuries compared to females was considered to be multifactorial. Among the factors influencing this scenario could be, men are more associated in outdoor activities compared to women, in many studies it has been shown that men are more involved in violence like fighting compared to women.