Pattern of skull fracture in Iran: report of the Iran National Trauma Project.

BACKGROUND We characterize in this report the mechanism and type of skull fracture in urban populations of Iran. METHODS Data including the general characteristics, mechanism of trauma, abbreviated injury scale, Glasgow coma scale, duration of hospitalization, and outcome of trauma patients registered from 1999 to 2004 were extracted from the Iranian National Trauma Registry database. RESULTS Of 16,321 registered trauma patients, 1704 cases with skull fracture were found. The most common mechanism of trauma was motor-vehicle crash (MVC) (62.5%) followed by fall (23.8%). The majority of traffic victims were pedestrians (41.6%). Skull fracture was more likely to be seen in men (78.6%), with a mean age of 27.2 ± 17.7 years. In MVCs, skull base fracture was observed in 51.2% and vault fracture in 48.8% of patients. A significant difference was found in sex distribution between skull base and vault fracture (p=0.002). MVC was the mechanism of injury in 67.4% of skull base fracture cases compared to 58.1% of vault fracture cases (p<0.001). CONCLUSION Safety legislations and risk-specific intervention programs should be improved considerably in Iran.