The epidemiology of renal trauma

INTRODUCTION: Nonoperative and minimally invasive management techniques for both blunt and penetrating renal trauma have become standard of care over the past decades. We sought to examine the modern epidemiology of renal trauma over the past decade. METHODS: A systematic review of PubMed from the past decade was conducted to examine adult and pediatric renal trauma. A total of 605 articles were identified. Of these, 15 adult and 5 pediatric articles met our a priori search criteria. RESULTS: There is a lack of uniform reporting of the renal trauma demographics precluding accurate assessment. Despite this, we were able to elucidate the following details. Renal trauma predominately affects young adult males, and the etiology is predominantly blunt. Among blunt injuries, motor vehicle crashes are most common among adult and pediatric patients. Nonoperative care was utilized in 94.8% of reviewed manuscripts with a 5.4% nephrectomy rate. DISCUSSION: There do not appear to be any startling changes in the presentation of adult and pediatric renal trauma over the past decade. Nonoperative care continues to be utilized as primary therapy. Increased attention on the reporting of renal trauma demographics is necessary to improve detection of trends. CONCLUSIONS: Increased reporting of the presenting demographics of adult and pediatric renal trauma is encouraged to assist future assessment of epidemiology.