Hand injuries sustained while contacting operating electric meat grinders (literature review illustrated with authors’ clinical cases)

Introduction Upper limb injuries sustained by children and adults with electric meat grinders in motion are mutilating. These injuries may lead to physical disability and severe psychological consequences not only for the injured subjects, but also for their family members.

Aim Based on current medical literature, to analyze the issues of incidence, etiopathogenesis, clinical symptoms, surgical treatment, rehabilitation, prevention of injuries to the upper limbs sustained with electric meat grinders and to illustrate the material with authors’ own clinical cases.

Material and methods The search for scientific publications was carried out in the electronic databases and libraries PubMed, eLIBRARY, CyberLeninka. The search depth was 47 years. In total, 49 scientific articles were analyzed and studied: 9 domestic sources (18.36 %) and 40 foreign ones (81.64 %).

Results and discussion Epidemiological data show that the incidence of injuries sustained by individuals while contacting with electric meat grinders in motion is 1.4 % to 11.1 % of open injuries to the upper limbs,. The main cause of this type of injury in children is the lack of control by adults, and in adults it is failure to comply with safety measures. The main mechanisms of trauma are traction and rotation. The right hand is most often injured, namely its fingers II, III and IV. Injuries are characterized by traumatic amputations, ruptures and crushing of hand segments. The most important goals of surgical treatment is excision of non-viable tissue, arrest of bleeding, shaping stumps of finger phalanges and metacarpal bones and / or osteosynthesis of  broken bones, suturing of vessels and nerves, the maximum possible closure of  the  soft tissue wound with preserved skin flaps. As preventive measures, it is proposed to inform the population on safety measures by operating electric meat grinders. There should be careful supervision by adults over young children if they are in places where food is prepared. Services of professional butchers are highly recommended.

Conclusion Based on data from 49 scientific articles, information was obtained on the frequency of occurrence, causes, mechanisms, clinical features, surgical treatment, rehabilitation and prevention of severe hand injuries sustained by individuals contacting with operation electric meat grinders.

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