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Affiliation
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a University of Medicine and Pharmacy Iuliu Hatieganu , Department of Public Health and Health Management , Victor Babes str. 8, Cluj-Napoca , 400012 Romania Email: diana.rus@publichealth.ro. |
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Abstract
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OBJECTIVE: Road traffic injuries are one of the leading causes of preventable unintentional injury. The European Injury Database estimated that in EU-27 countries road traffic injuries account for 10% of all injuries treated in the emergency department or admitted to the hospital, accounting for 4.2 million victims each year. We examined the characteristics and outcomes of road traffic injuries treated in a large emergency department in Romania by different types of road users.
METHODS: Secondary data analysis was conducted on a sample of patients who suffered a transport related injury and received care at the Emergency Department of Mures County Emergency Hospital in Romania. Data was collected by two trained emergency physicians between March 2009 and July 2010, as part of the European Injury Database project. Information about demographics, mechanism, nature, place of occurrence, and activity of injury; treatment and follow-up and mode of transport were described for five different categories of road users: animal drawn vehicle (operator and passenger), passenger car (driver and passenger), motorcycle (driver and passenger), bicyclist and pedestrian.
RESULTS: A total of 2782 patients were treated in the emergency department, of which 718 (25.8%) were road traffic injuries. The male to female ratio was 2:1. The highest percentage of patients were injured in passenger cars (49%), followed by motorcycles (16.7%). For both types of road users, the majority of patients were between the ages of 18 and 29. Pedestrian injuries accounted for 14.6%, of which a third were children up to the age of 17 and 40% were adults and elderly over the age of 50. The majority of patients were injured due to contact with a moving object (48.1%), followed by contact with static object (23.5%), then falling, stumbling, jumping, or being pushed (19.6%). Contusion and bruises (54.9%) were the most common diagnosis, followed by fractures (20.1%) and open wounds (10.2%) for all road user categories. The most common part of the body injured for all road user categories was the head region (42.3%). Of the 34.9% patients treated and admitted to the hospital, 30% had a length of stay between 4 and 7 days.
CONCLUSIONS: Understanding the extent, nature and characteristics of road traffic injuries may help to identify vulnerable road users in specific settings and implement the most effective prevention strategies targeting the most affected populations.
Language: en |