Causes of knee injury and some considerations in management

Abstract

Background: Although knee joint injury is one of the most frequent injury in our country, research lacks in investigating causes, risks, treatment cost for Mongolia situation. Study aim: We aimed to study the features, causes for knee injury and epidemiological characteristics, cost of arthroscopic surgeries. Methods: To examine the distribution of knee joint injuries, we used descriptive research design to analyze the injury surveillance and patient history records from the National Trauma and Orthopedic Research Centre from 2015 to 2019. We investigated injury cause, treatment cost, and clinical features for 48 cases that met study selection requirements and received surgery at the National Trauma and Orthopedic Research Center from 2018 to 2019 for the study. We used SPSS 20 software for data analysis. Result: Approximately, 13.7% of the 15554 patients received healthcare in hospital due to knee and crus muscle injury in the last 5 years. In total 300-400 patients got microsurgery which was 4.27% of all the surgical cases in one year. Mostly, young male adults (average age 33.3, 67.8% male) experienced knee injury and which was commonly due to sports: 60.7%, injury from basketball, 26.7% from wrestling, 8.6% was due to biking and rest of the injuries was from mechanical forces including compression and tension, respectively. The average microsurgery cost was 3.829.565₮. Of these, 3.255.130₮ were covered from health insurance and 574.435₮ were out-of-pocket payment. Conclusion: We observed that young males were prone to knee injury due to injuries caused by sports, falls, and inanimate objects. Injuries that received late medical care were associated with more functional loss. Arthroscopic surgery cost remains 3 to 10 times cheaper in Mongolia, in comparison international rates.