Basic and patient-oriented research
Incidence and Severity of Maxillofacial Injuries During the Second Lebanon War Among Israeli Soldiers and Civilians

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joms.2007.11.028Get rights and content

Purpose

To analyze the incidence and severity of maxillofacial injuries in the Second Lebanon War, that occurred during the summer of 2006, among Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Patients and Methods

This is a retrospective cohort study of patients recorded in the Israel National Trauma Registry during the Second Lebanon War. Data refer to all general hospitals throughout the country. Data were analyzed according to the etiology of the injury, severity of trauma using the Injury Severity Score, trauma location, and duration of hospital stay. Cases with multiple injuries that included maxillofacial injuries were separated and further analyzed according to the above parameters. Patients with only dental injuries and superficial facial soft tissue lacerations were excluded because they were referred to the military dental clinics and not to general hospitals.

Results

Maxillofacial injuries were found in 36 (6.4%) of the 565 wounded. Patients with maxillofacial injuries ranged in age from 20 to 44 years (mean age, 25.5 ± 5.7 years). Greater than 50% of the injuries required more than 3 hospitalization days. Mortality rate of the maxillofacial injured was 2.8%. Most of the maxillofacial injuries (33; 91.7%) were combined with other organ injuries; 9 (25%) patients also had dental injuries.

Conclusion

In the Second Lebanon War, the incidence and severity of true maxillofacial injuries, without dental injuries alone, were relatively low compared with previous reports of other conflicts. However, because most injuries involved multiple organs, special attention is required when planning and providing emergency, as well as secondary and tertiary medical care to war wounded.

Section snippets

Patients and Methods

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) does not have its own hospitals, except for general and specialist out-patient clinics and a rehabilitation hospital. For admission and hospitalization of soldiers, the military medical team evacuates the patient to the nearest civilian general hospital.

This is a retrospective cohort study of patients recorded in the Israel National Trauma Registry (ITR) during the Second Lebanon War, from July 12, 2006, to August 14, 2006. The ITR records all casualty admissions

Results

Maxillofacial injuries were found in 36 (6.4%) of the 565 war-related injuries recorded. Patients were all males, ranging in age from 20 to 44 years (mean, 25.5 ± 5.7 years). Most of the injuries (n = 33; 91.7%) occurred in soldiers and only 3 (8.3%) in civilians (Table 1). All civilian wounds were from missiles.

The etiologies of the maxillofacial injuries are presented in Table 2. There were no civilian-type maxillofacial injuries. Table 3 shows the injury severity according to the ISS

Discussion

Injuries in the facial region during the Second Lebanon War were the third most common among body regions, after lower and upper extremities.9 During that war, 79% and 49% of the severe/critical (ISS ≥16) and minor/moderate (ISS <16) injured soldiers were evacuated by helicopters, respectively, and the remainder evacuated by ground vehicles. Mean evacuation time was 2.5 hours for severe/critical injured soldiers and 6.3 hours for minor/moderate injured.9

The present report of 6.4% maxillofacial

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Ms Rita Lazar for editorial assistance.

References (20)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

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