A STUDY TO ASSESS THE FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH SEVERITY OF ROAD TRAFFIC INJURIES IN THE EMERGENCY MEDICINE DEPARTMENT OF PESIMSR, KUPPAM

Objective: To assess the factors associated with severity of road traffic injuries and to compare between the factors and the severity of road traffic injuries. Method: A prospective study was conducted at PESMIR during the period of 2012-2014 .A total 750 confirmed accident cases were considered for the study. The secondary data was collected as per the date and time of accident, age, gender, education, place of accident, type of vehicle involved, victim involved, usage of seat belts or helmets, type of road, animal barricade, driving licence, alcohol influence and Injury Severity Score. Results: The results showed that male patients contributed to 83.0% of the accident while females were 17% with the mean age between 36 to 38 years respectively. Majority of the patients were below primary school (59.7%). Between the times of accident to the time of arrival to the hospital the mean was 15.52 minutes. With regard to the place of accident, rural area contributed to 85.00%. The 2-wheeler contributed to 42.00% among the type of vehicles with rider contributing to 39.00% under the victim category. Usage of seat belts or helmets was almost nil contributing to 99.60%. Most of the roads were single roads (94.4%). The usage of driving license contributed to only 45.00%. Alcohol consumption in road traffic accidents contributed to 48%.Injury Severity Score showed that 43.00% of the population in the study was critically ill. All the contributed factors were statistically significant (p<0.01) with type of road, area of accident, alcohol influence, age, rider and usage of seatbelts/helmets respectively. Conclusion: Road traffic injury has emerged as a major public health problem, which can be definitely prevented and controlled by the light of sensitization programme. Efforts need to be made in all areas concerned with road safety, enforcement, education and emerging care, after all road safety is no accident occurs on the epitome