부산대학교 도서관

Objective: Domestic violence, a common reason for a visit to the surgical emergency department, constitutes a serious social and psychological problem with harmful consequences to the psychological and physiological functioning of the victim. This study aimed to profile the clinical characteristics of patients who visited the emergency department due to domestic violence. Method: Patients who had visited the surgical emergency department due to traumatic injury from domestic violence between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2015, were included in this study with retrieval of the following information: age, sex, perpetrator of violence, injury region and mechanism, clinical presentation, injury severity, outcome, expenditure after admission, and in-hospital mortality, for further presentation. Results: 367 patients were included in this study who had visited the surgical emergency room as victims of domestic violence; among them, 8 (2.2%) patients required an admission for treatment. Most of the victims (n = 291, 79.3%) were female. 210 (57.2%) and 52 (14.2%) patients had been abused by spouses and children, respectively. The analysis of injury mechanism discovered that 358 (97.5%) patients sustained a blunt injury, followed by fall (n = 6, 1.6%) and penetrating injury (n =3, 0.8%). Most injuries were found in the head/ neck (n = 129, 35.1%) and external (n = 124, 33.8%) regions, followed by the extremities (n = 91, 24.8%) and face (n = 81, 22.1%). The average Injury Severity Score (ISS) was 1.5 ± 1.7. However, the average ISS of those eight hospitalized patients was 8.0 ± 7.6. All patients who were discharged from the emergency department after treatment survived; in contrast, of those hospitalized patients, one patient, who had sustained brain damage following profound shock after a penetrating injury into the abdomen by fruit knife, was fatal. The average total expenditure was 198,326 ± 265,866 New Taiwan (NT) dollars, with cost of examination, cost of pharmaceuticals, cost of operation being 12,065 ± 19,657, 23,381 ± 46,870 and 31,989 ± 30,278 NT dollars, respectively. Conclusion: Domestic violence may result in fractures of different regions or injuries to the visceral organs that require hospitalization or operation, and may even cause the death of the victim. Elucidation of the clinical characteristics of the patients who sustained trauma injures from domestic violence may help to profile the condition of the victims, serve as references for protection measure for domestic violence, and advocate living environments free from domestic violence.