Muhammad Anwar, Jamshed Akhtar, Ruquia Khatoon, Roshan Ali.
Blast Injuries in Children and Adolescents.
J Surg Pak Jan ;20(1):15-8.

Objective: To find out pattern of injuries, treatment provided and outcome of blast injuries in children including adolescents. Study design: Case series. Place & Duration of study: Department of Paediatric Surgery National Institute of Child Health (NICH) Karachi, August and October 2013. Methodology: Demographic data of the blast victims, nature of the blast, treatment received before arrival to NICH, injuries found and treated, complications and outcome in terms of discharge, referred or death was entered into a performa. Descriptive statistics were used to present data. Results: Two incidents occurred during the study period. A total of ten children and adolescents were injured. In incident 1, bomb blast occurred after a football match. The bomb was planted in motorbike and was detonated with remote control. In incident 2 blast occurred when extortionist hurled hand grenade into a clinic of a doctor. Victims received multiple injuries. Of the total three children needed chest intubation in ER after needle thoracentesis for life threatening tension pneumothorx. A total of five laparotomies and one laparoscopy were performed. Hollow viscera were involved both due to blast wave and penetrating missile. Small bowel was involved in most (n=4) and colon in two patients. No intraperitoneal breach was found in patient who underwent laparoscopy. One patient lost his eye sight while in one patient was found paraplegic at tertiary survey. No mortality occurred in this series. Conclusions: The pattern of blast injuries were not different from what is reported from other centers. An organized approach using ATLS protocol was found useful in managing victims. Hollow visceral injuries were found in most of the cases.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com