For injuries incurred in falls, more than 3 million people 65 and older need emergency room treatment each year. Head trauma, the most common cause of significant injury, often results in skull fractures. Women account for 58% of all falls, according to the annual study from the National Trauma Database for 2016.
Given that older women are more likely to fall and sustain facial fractures.
It is crucial to determine whether they also have an increased risk of skull fractures. There is currently a dearth of data on how frequently head injuries in this population result in skull fractures.
Also, there is a widespread lack of knowledge regarding the best ways to treat brain injuries in the elderly population. The Schmidt Faculty of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University undertook a study to evaluate and compare the risk of secondary skull fracture following head trauma in female and male patients 65 years of age and older. They prospectively assessed every patient who had had a head injury at two level-one trauma centres in southeast Florida that cared for more than 360,000 elderly patients.
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Researchers analysed acute trauma-related skull fractures by sex, patient race/ethnicity, and mechanism of injury in the study. A total of 5,402 patients were enrolled, and 56% of them were female and 44% were male. Eighty-five percent of head injuries were caused by falls, and this pattern was seen regardless of race or ethnicity or the mechanism of injury.
The mean ages of the genders were 82.8 and 81.1 years, respectively.
The study’s findings, which were reported in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, revealed that when geriatric males and females were compared, males had a much higher incidence of secondary skull fracture from head trauma, which was primarily caused by falls.
Given that girls are more likely to have face fractures, this result was unexpected. Although results were only statistically significant for whites, this trend was observed regardless of race or ethnicity.
