Iranian Journal of Emergency Medicine

Abstract

Shoulder dislocation is identified as displacement of humerus head from the glenoid cavity of scapula bone, which makes up about 50% of total joint dislocations. Taking into account the importance of the side effects and disabilities caused by this type of dislocation and that it can be prevented, the present study was designed aiming to evaluate the epidemiologic characteristics of the patients with shoulder dislocation. In this retrospective cross-sectional study, all the patients referred to the emergency department (ED) with complaint of shoulder dislocation throughout one year were evaluated. Demographic data and characteristics regarding the type of dislocation, presence of accompanying fractures, mechanism of dislocation, history of dislocation and the method of reduction were extracted from the patients’ profiles and recorded in a checklist designed for this purpose. Data were then statistically analyzed using SPSS version 19. Statistics showed that 120 patients with the mean age of 39.3 ± 21.2 years had been admitted to ED of the studied center in one year (79.2% male). The most common type of dislocation was anterior dislocation (95.8%) and in the right shoulder (52.5%) and the most common cause was falling on open arm (34.2%). Reduction method was non-operative in 93.3% of the cases and surgery in 6.7%. Based on the results of this study, in the studied population, most patients with shoulder dislocation were young men who had an anterior dislocation in their right shoulder because of falling on out stretched hand and treated with close reduction.