Abstract
Introduction: Trauma is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Pakistan where tertiary care hospitals bear huge burden of trauma cases daily. We observed the effect of Covid 19 lockdown on presentation of trauma. Objective: To look for the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on frequency of trauma cases presenting to surgical emergency of Mayo Hospital, Lahore. Methods: This Cross-sectional study was carried out at the Department of Accident and Emergency, Mayo Hospital, Lahore from 23 Jan 2020 to 23 May 2020. All patients presenting with trauma were included in the study. Ethical Approval from IRB of KEMU was taken. SPSS v26.0 was used to enter and analyze data. Comparison of proportions between both groups were made by using the χ2 test. Data were stratified for Age and gender to address the effect modifiers. A p-value ≤0.05 was considered significant. Results: A total of 4657 patients(n=4657) presented with an injury to surgical emergency of mayo hospital. There were 4057 males(87.1%) and 600 females(12.9%). Overall mean age was 30.7±13.37 S.D. Of the total patients, 2709(58.2%) presented before lockdown while 1948(41.8%) after lockdown. There was reduction by 30% in RTA cases, 2373 presented before lockdown while after lockdown 1663 cases reported. Assault- Blunt injury and Burn showed same pattern i-e 173 and 64 before while 134 and 45 after lockdown, respectively. On the contrary, FAI and Assault-Penetrating showed slight increase (6% and 7%) in cases reported i-e 72 and 18 before while 76 and 22 after lockdown, respectively. Fall showed no change i.e remained 0.2%(p-value=0.086) Conclusion: The Covid-19 lockdown has secondary impact of reducing trauma especially RTAs. However, the rates of FAIs and penetrating assault injuries may not be reduced by social distancing and lockdown measures; it is in fact linked to higher rates.
