The relative associations of the paediatric trauma score and revised trauma score with the severity of childhood trauma.

BACKGROUND: Children are prone to unintentional injuries and various scoring systems have been used to triage these injuries. The aim of this study is to determine the associations between paediatric trauma score (PTS), revised trauma score (RTS) and the length of hospital stay as an indicator of injury severity. METHODS: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar and National Orthopaedic Hospital, Enugu from February 2018 to March 2020. A structured questionnaire was used to collect personal, injury-specific and treatment-specific data. The relationship between PTS, RTS and the length of hospital stay was evaluated using the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). RESULTS: A total of 212 patients were included in the study. Majorities (129, 60%) of the injured children were male and most of the injuries were due to falls from height (54%). The mean PTS was 5.36 ± 1.9, while the mean RTS was 7.10 ± 0.9. The Pearson's product momentum correlation coefficient shows that there was weak but statistically significant correlation between the PTS and the RTS (r = 0.22, P = 0.02). The one-way ANOVA showed a statistically significant decrease in the RTS with increasing duration of hospital admission (F-statistic = 6.654, df = 3, P = 0.000). The PTS showed a less obvious decrease with no trend. CONCLUSION: In this study, the RTS showed an inverse relationship with the length of hospital stay.

Tropical Diabetic Hand Syndrome-Report of 2 Cases.

Tropical diabetic hand syndrome (TDHS) is not a commonly reported complication of diabetes mellitus. It was first reported in Nigeria in 1984[1] but prior to that time, in 1977, it was described in the United States of America.[2] Several other cases are now being reported in other countries of Africa and India. It is termed TDHS because it affected patients with diabetes mellitus in the tropics. It presents with cellulitis, ulceration, and fulminant sepsis of the hand, which may progress to gangrene, and many have lost the digits as seen in one of our patients or sometimes the whole hand. Many of these patients present very late as the onset of the condition is usually due to minor trauma to the hand like a pin prick or little scratches, which result in cellulitis are treated by patent medicine dealers until the sepsis and possibly gangrene in some cases sets in.