Research on treatment of musculoskeletal injuries

On 16 December at 16:00, in an open meeting of the Medical Promotion Council of Rīga Stradiņš University which will be held in the Hippocrates Lecture Theatre (16 Dzirciema Street, Rīga), Ruta Jakušonoka will defend her doctoral thesis “Evaluation of the Functional Outcome of Polytrauma Patients with Musculoskeletal Injuries”.

Regaining the ability to walk, return to work and carry out daily activities is a long-term process for patients after suffering severe traumas. The functional outcome for polytrauma patients is dependent not only on the mechanism and severity of the trauma, but also on the timely and adequate primary examination of the patient, provision of first aid, treatment and early rehabilitation.

The author of the paper has carried out research on the functional outcome of treatment of patients following polytrauma with lower limb injuries. The paper has been developed at Rīga Stradiņš University in cooperation with National Rehabilitation Centre “Vaivari”, Riga East Clinical University Hospital “Gaiļezers” and the Hospital of Traumatology and Orthopaedics. Three dimensional instrumental gait analysis (an examination method, during which quantitative information about the movements of body segments is collected with the aim to understand the origin of disorders and to find ways to prevent them) was carried out for patients included in the research at the Rehabilitation Research Laboratory of the Faculty of Rehabilitation, Rīga Stradiņš University, and National Rehabilitation Centre “Vaivari”. It was established that patients have significant functional gait disorders not only on the injured side, but even on the uninjured side.

Alongside the abovementioned, the author analysed the relationship between trauma severity with gait disorders. Based on research results, the author has developed an algorithm at the Department of Orthopaedics, Rīga Stradiņš University. The author suggests that this algorithm might be used for the prognosis of functional results in patients with severe injuries with an aim to enable timely necessary treatment and rehabilitation activities that are of tremendous importance for these patients.

The author of the thesis proposes to introduce an Abbreviated injury scale – an injury severity coding system, that has been widely used abroad for the detection of the severity of injuries in patients with severe injuries – with an aim to select appropriate treatment strategies based on these calculations.