Interpersonal Violence and Maxillofacial Injuries: Toward an Active Surveillance Proposal Through the Presentation Profile in Hospital Emergency Services

Abstract

To establish a set of variables that define a predictive profile of events of maxillofacial trauma resulting from interpersonal violence, we analyzed sociodemographic variables and clinical characteristics of injuries recorded in three tertiary care hospital centers in Chile. To assess the relation between categories, we applied a multiple correspondence analysis. We identified 567 cases. Two dimensions explained 53.4% of the model. The first dimension was composed of variables related to the severity of the injury: medical–legal prognosis (.574), type of trauma (.511), and the destination of the patient (.332); the second dimension was composed of variables related to the typology of interpersonal violence: type of violence (.398) and sex of the patient (.370). Two profiles were recognized: women, victims of domestic violence, with lesions affecting mainly soft tissues and not requiring hospitalization and men, victims of community violence, with lesions involving fractures associated with greater severity and requiring hospitalization. There are two key dimensions in the diagnosis of maxillofacial trauma resulting from interpersonal violence: severity of the injury and typology of the interpersonal violence. Exploring these predictive profiles can be a useful complement to the current screening tools of violence in clinical practice.