Citation

O'Malley KF, Van Buren D, Schwab CW. Proc. Am. Assoc. Automot. Med. Annu. Conf. 1986; 30: 295-302.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1986, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In a previous review (1) of all highway trauma victims admitted to The Southern New Jersey Regional Trauma Center from 10/1/83 to 10/31/84, it was found that concomitant skeletal fractures above and below the waist (LUBI -lower and upper body injury) were accompanied by an extremely high rate of visceral injury to the head, chest, or abdomen. There were 202 patients included in this study (113 automobile occupants, 54 pedestrians, 22 motorcyclists, and 13 pedalcyclists) and there was a bias toward the more severely injured victim. To investigate the possibility that this sampling bias may have rendered our findings invalid when applied to all highway trauma victims, a second three-part study was undertaken. The original hypothesis was found to be questionable; however, by defining LUBI to consider only femur fractures as lower body fractures (FUBI). a useful indicator of occult abdominal injury in the highway trauma victim has been developed.