A 60-year-old man known to have DM type 2 was brought by the family as a camel hit his knee. He was not able to walk on it at the scene and in ED. It was swollen with no open wound.
Tips
Although patients come with isolated injuries, we always have to make sure that they do not have other injury findings. Therefore, approaching systematically to the patient is important. At this moment, please remember primary and secondary surveys of multiple trauma. The animal attacks may create multiple injuries on patients, and they should be evaluated as multiply injured patients. After you ruled our multiple or life, organ, extremity threatening injury, you can deep dive into isolated injuries. In this case, knee injury after a direct hit.
Of course, inspection and palpation are essential in every extremity injury. Evaluating the patient for neurovascular problems and range of motions are applied in almost every extremity trauma. But sometimes, clinical presentations or findings can be subtle and you may need a better tool. In these case, we recommend using Ottawa Knee Rules.
The image shows tibia plateau fracture on AP knee x-ray.
