A meta-analysis to evaluate the prevalence of maxillofacial trauma caused by various etiologies among children and adolescents.

AIMS

Children and adolescents who are affected by trauma may have complications that are more serious and dangerous. Herein, a meta-analysis to evaluate the prevalence of maxillofacial trauma caused by various etiologies according to the geographic regions of the world among children and adolescents was conducted.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A comprehensive search was performed in four databases of PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and Scopus from January 1, 2006 until July 7, 2021. To evaluate the quality of included articles, an adapted version of the Newcastle-Ottawa scale was used. The prevalence of maxillofacial trauma was estimated by event rates and 95% confidence intervals in relation to etiology and geographic region of study population.

RESULTS

Through search in the databases and the electronic sources, 3071 records were identified, and 58 studies were eligible for inclusion in the meta-analysis. A total of 264,433 maxillofacial trauma cases were reported by all included studies. Globally, the overall prevalence of maxillofacial trauma was highest due to Road Traffic Crashes (RTC) (33.8%) followed by falls (20.7%), violence (9.9%), and sports (8.1%) in children/adolescents. The highest prevalence of maxillofacial trauma were observed in African population (48.3%) while trauma due to falls was most prevalent in Asian population (44.1%). Maxillofacial trauma due to violence (27.6%) and sports (13.3%) were highest in North Americans.

CONCLUSION

The findings demonstrate that RTC was the most prevalent etiology of maxillofacial trauma in the world. The prevalent causes of maxillofacial trauma differed between the regions of study population.