Abstract
Aims
The aim of this study was to statistically analyse the incidence and distribution of humerus fractures in the adult age group between 3rd and 10th decades.
Methods
The total number of patients was retrieved from the audit department of the hospital using the codes to identify patients between 1997 and 2009. The data included total number of patients aged 20 to 100 years who were either reviewed in the fracture clinics or admitted to the hospital with forearm fractures along with patient gender, age at the time of incident and time of the year the incident occurred. Annual incidence of fractures along with the distribution of fracture incidence per year and per individual month was calculated. The patients’ age were classified in to 3rd to 10th decades. Linear regression analysis was carried out to identify the relationship between fracture incidence and the age or time of the injury. Correlation coefficients(R) and r2 were calculated for all the regression analyses. SPSS (version 16) and Microsoft Excel 2007 were used for statistics.
Results
A total of 1280 fractures were identified that included 524 males and 756 females (F/M=1.44). The average age of patients was 60.87 years. Comparing the different months of the year for fracture incidence, the average of incidence of fractures was found to be highest in july per year. There was a linear increase in the incidence of fractures from january to september (R=0.94, r2=0.89) followed by a drop in subsequent months. The total number of humerus fractures per year increased from49 in 1997 to 137 in 2009. In both males and females, there was strong relation to linearity in the increase in the incidence of fractures per year from 1997 to 2009 (Females: R=0.89, r2=0.79, Males: R=0.87, r2=0.76). On comparison of the linear equations for males and females, the rate of increase in the incidence of fractures in females was found to be approximately 1.5 times that of males. In females, There was a linear increase in the fracture incidence from the 3rd to the 9th decade (R=0.96, r2=0.92) followed by a sudden drop in the 10th decade. In men, there was a linear decrease in the fracture incidence from the 3rd to the 9th decade (r2=0.81, R=0.90).
Conclusion
In the last 13 years, there has been an increase in the incidence of humerus fractures in both men and women; however, the rate of increase in the incidence in women is almost 1.5 times that of men. There was a strong correlation between age and incidence of fractures in both men and women: with increasing age, the incidence of fracture increased in women and decreased in men. The drop in fractures in women the 10th decade can be attributed to a reduced living population after 90 years. The obtained linear equations can be useful in predicting the number of fractures occurring in a certain age group in a community.
