INTRODUCTION: Traumatic head injury is one of the most common causes of death and disability worldwide. The clinical and pathological features of head injury are not only helpful for its diagnosis and treatment, but also can help analyze the wounding mechanism in the field of forensic medicine.
OBJECTIVES: Our study was designed to investigate cases of traumatic head injury referred to neuro-surgery department of Benha university hospital during the period starting from March-2016 till February-2017 to describe epidemiological and medico legal features of these cases.
SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Data was obtained from the available medico legal reports and was statistically analyzed.
RESULTS: There were 548 cases admitted to neurosurgery department out of 1382 cases representing 39.7%. Most of them were males in the age group (0-9) years and was admitted mostly in summer (40.9%). The most common outcome was complete recovery (90.9%). Blunt head trauma was the most frequent type of trauma (57.3%) while the most frequent site affected was the multiple sites (24.5%). RTA were the most frequent cause of head injury (66.8%). The most frequent manner of head injury was accidental (88%). The most common mechanism of injury to the head trauma was direct impact (41.6%). Intracranial hemorrhage was the most common type of head injury lesion representing (35.4%). According to GCS, Mild cases (13-15) outnumbered the other degrees of coma representing 81.8%. Intra cranial hemorrhage was the most common finding of CT (35.5%) while the least common was brain edema (2.4%).
CONCLUSION: The total number of traumatic head injury cases was 548. The most commonly affected age group was children. Males represented most cases. The peak incidence of traumatic skull fractures was in summer. The most common cause of traumatic skull fractures was road traffic accident followed by fall. Accidental infliction was the most common manner. The most commonly affected bone was multiple sites. Most cases had full recovery.