Trauma & Critical Care

Biography

Biography: Engida Yisma

Abstract

Background Road traffic injuries are the eighth leading cause of death globally, and the leading cause of death for young people. More than a million people die each year on the world’s roads, and the risk of dying as a result of a road traffic injury is highest in Africa. Methods We performed a prospective hospital based study to assess injury characteristics and outcome of road traffic accident among victims at Adult Emergency Department of Tikur Anbessa specialized hospital. The data were collected using structured pre-tested questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS Version 20.0. Results A total of 230 road traffic accident victims were studied. The majority of the study subjects were men 165 (71.7 %). The victims’ ages ranged from 14 to 80 years with the mean and standard deviations of 32.15 and ± 14.38 years respectively. Daily laborers (95 (41.3 %)) and students (28 (12.2 %)) were the majority of road traffic accident victims. Head (50.4 %) and musculoskeletal (extremities) (47.0%) were the most common body region injured. Fractures (78.0%) and open wounds (56.5%) were the most common type of injuries sustained. The overall length of hospital stay (LOS) ranged from 1 day to 61 days with mean (± standard deviation) of 7.12 ± 10.5 days and the mortality rate was 7.4 %. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that age of the victims (ß = 0.16, p < 0.05), systolic blood pressure on admission (ß = -0.35, p < 0.001) and Glasgow coma scale (ß = -0.44, p < 0.001) were statistically significant predictors of fatalities among the victims. Conclusions There was diverse injury characteristics and high morbidity and mortality among the victims presented to Emergency Department of Tikur Anbessa specialized hospital and this reflect that road traffic accident is a major public health problem.