Prevalence and Associated Risk Factors of Head Injury among Trauma Patients of Addis Ababa Burn, Emergency and Trauma Hospital, Ethiopia June 16 to July 16, 2019

Abstract

Summary Background: Injuries are a major problem in both developing and developed countries. Trauma is a neglected public health problem in developing countries with over 90% of the world’s injury deaths occurring in low and middle income countries. Globally, traumatic head injury will exceed many other diseases as the main cause of disability and death by the year 2020 according to the World Health Organization (WHO) since it is a significant public health problem because it impairs brain function and it often results in negative long term or permanent physical, cognitive, behavioral, and emotional changes. Since 2010 Ethiopia has been committed to improve trauma care system via increasing pre hospital care system and training of the first cadre of emergency physician and nurses. There was no enough research conducted on head injury in the country’s context, the prevalence of head injury is a common health problem that causes morbidity and mortality in the productive age group of population which directly affects the development of the country Objective: To assess the prevalence and associated risk factors of head injury among trauma patients presented to AaBET hospital from June 16 to July 16, 2019, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Method: Institution based, analytical cross sectional study will be conducted. All patients presented to AaBET hospital will be the source population for the study and All trauma patients presented to AaBET hospital from June 16 to July 16, 2019 will be the study population. A structured questionnaire will be adapted from the WHO (World Health organization) injury surveillance document and will be used after modified to fit the study population. For the data collection three nurses and two supervisors will be selected from AaBET hospital and two days training will be given for the data collectors and supervisors about the questionnaire by the principal investigator. The questionnaire will be translated in to Amharic language and those patients included in the study will be interviewed by data collectors and data abstraction tool will be used for patient card review. Pretest of the structured questionnaire will be done on 5% of study sample at Ras Desta Hospital to check the validity and reliability of data collection tools and necessary modifications will be made based on the findings. Frequencies and cross tabulations will be used to summarize descriptive statistics of the data. Simple logistic analysis will be used primarily to check variables which have associations with the dependent variable. Variables found to have association with the dependent variable will be entered into multiple logistic regression for controlling the possible effect of confounders and finally the variables with significant association at P-value<0.05 will be identified on the basis of Odds Ratio with 95 % confidence interval. DURATION and BUDGET: The study will be conducted from June 16 to July16, 2019 with an estimated budget of 25,550 birr.