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Journal Article

Citation

Becker QH. Proc. Am. Assoc. Automot. Med. Annu. Conf. 1975; 19: 409-410.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1975, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

After the Vietnam war died down, we noticed more and more that we were treating large numbers of injuries associated with motorcycle accidents. We decided to take one year and see what the impact would be on our military manpower. All the cases were collected for 1972 and the figures are only concerned with 1972 as far as hospital days and days lost from full duty. Many of these patients were in the hospital many months in 1971 and some of them are still here in 1973 but this was not taken into consideration.

The motorcycle problem is a deep-seated one and one that will be with us. I think it is a challenge to see if we can do anything to prevent this great waste of manpower and human suffering. In the Armed Forces in 1971 there were 184 killed and 2,000+ sustained disabling injuries. In the United States Navy in 1971, there were 54 killed with 551 disabling injuries. In 1972 there were 71 killed with 733 disabling injuries. Ten percent of the Navy military personnel are motorcyclists and they accounted for 20.7 percent of privately-owned vehicle accidents.

the Orthopedic Service at Tripler in 1972 had 45 Navy patients accounting for 3,445 hospitals days and 2,241 light duty days. There were 19 Marine patients, 986 hospital days, 1228 light duty days and the Air Force only had 8 patients with 501 hospital days, 463 light duty days. This was a grand total of 93 patients with 5,740 hospital days and 5,484 days of light duty which accounted for 11,224 man-days lost from full duty. This does not take into account the men who had to change their specialty especially in the Navy when a great deal of money is spent to train these men to serve on submarines or operate some of their highly sophisticated equipment. The average hospital days per patient was 58, the average light duty days per patient 59. Four patients were medically retired, four patients received permanent profiles. These men accounted for 139 fractures, 10 major dislocations, 19 major abrasions, 15 major lacerations, 1 man lost his leg and 1 man was rendered quadriplegic. There were 80 lower extremity fractures of which the tibia was the leader with 27. There were 20 metatarsals and 12 femurs. Forty-two per cent of these accidents involved another vehicle, that is a car or truck.

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