2012 Volume 72 Issue 2 Pages 216-221
In facial bone fractures, the treatment for mandible fracture is determined by the location of the fracture and the number of fracture lines. To date, we have used a classification system of fractures based on their location (“old method” in this article) or known as “the classification of location of fracture as based on the number of fracture lines”. In this study, we compared the old method to a new classification method based on the number of fracture lines based on each patient (“new method”). Fractures were classified as follows: one fracture line on mandibula was called type I, two lines type II, three lines type III, and four or more lines type IV. From April 1997 to July 2011, we treated 1735 cases of facial fractures including 153 cases of mandible fractures. We studied the mandible fractures. Of the patients, 110 were males and 43 were females. Patient ages ranged from 3 to 92 years, and averaged 36.2 years old. The most frequent fracture involved nasal bones (57%), followed by the zygoma (18%), mandible (9%) and maxilla 4%. In our classification of mandible fractures, the most frequent type of mandible fracture was type I (50%), followed by the type II (42%), type III (7%) and type IV (1%). The most frequent cause was falls (49%) followed by traffic accidents (24%), assault (12%), sports (8%) and suicide (4%). In the treatment methods, only type I received conservative treatment (62%) more often than operative treatment (38%). The other types received more conservative treatment (over 70%) than operative treatment. We found that the new classification system offered an improved prediction of the method of treatment and length of hospitalization.
