An analysis of 45 patients with pure nasal fractures.

BACKGROUND

Nasal fracture is generally encountered alone or in combination with other serious injuries. The objective of this study was to analyze patients who had pure nasal fracture.

METHODS

Forty-five records from patients with pure nasal fracture treated in the hospital between 7 October 2005 and 14 December 2011 were included. The following nasal fracture criteria were evaluated: age at the time of nasal trauma, gender, accident type, use of alcohol, findings of the physical examination, treatment time after the nasal fracture, and year and seasonal distribution.

RESULTS

The age ranged from 6-32 years, with a mean age of 21 years. The most frequent reasons of the injury were violence 60% (27 cases) followed by falling 31% (14 cases), accidents 4.5% (2 cases) and sport injuries 4.5% (2 cases). The most frequent findings were tenderness in 71.1% (32 cases), followed by swelling in 51.1% (23 cases), nasal deviation in 42.2% (19 cases), and epistaxis in 15.6% (7 cases). Nasal bone fracture was diagnosed exactly by standard X-ray films in 91.1% (41 cases).

CONCLUSION

In this study; pure nasal bone fractures occurred primarily among men under 25 years of age, and fights were found to be the main etiologic factor.