Spectrum of Mandibular Fractures in a Tertiary Care Hospital at Karachi

Objective: To evaluate the frequency, pattern, and etiology of mandibular fractures at a tertiary care hospital, in Karachi Study Design: Retrospective, cross-sectional study. Setting: Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan Methodology: The study was initiated in Outpatient Maxillofacial Surgery Department of Abbasi Shaheed Hospital Karachi. The duration of the study was 5 years and six months. Data of mandibular trauma was evaluated. In this retrospective, cross-sectional study the patients were recruited through convenience sampling and the inclusion criteria was patients from both genders suffered from mandibular trauma of mandibular region. Patients who suffered from the trauma of face other than mandible were excluded. The sample size of the study was 464.  A questionnaire was designed to enquire into the demographic details like age, sex, etiology, and site of fracture. The data was analyzed on SPSS version 17.0. Results: The majority of patients were males i.e. 384 (82.8%) while 80 (17.2%) were females. The most common type of fracture was combination fractures followed by parasymphysis i.e. 142 (30.6%) and 79 (17%) respectively. Road traffic accident was the major cause of trauma i.e. 332 (71.6%) followed by fall 96 (20.7%). Cross tabulation was done between different variables. Association of gender with etiology and type of fracture revealed non-significant p-value while the association of age with etiology revealed significant p-value. The highest number of mandibular fracture cases due to RTA were reported in the year 2019. Conclusion: It has been concluded that the frequency of mandibular trauma is quite high with male dominance. The most susceptible site of trauma is the combination and parasymphseal region and the most common etiology were road traffic accidents.