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Abstract
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In last three years (2013-2015) the Ambulance Service of Iasi, the largest county from the North-East region of Romania, provided emergency care to 4,028 road traffic injured persons, after the 112 Single Emergency Call Number has been dialed.
AIM: This paper describes the main personal characteristics of the road traffic casualties taken over by the Ambulance Service, to design a profile of the injured persons, on whose foundation, specific protective measures regarding the road traffic injuries could be developed.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: The survey is based on a descriptive analysis of the 4,028 cases forwarded by the central dispatch to the Iasi County Ambulance Service. The data source was provided by the Iasi County Ambulance Service and conceived of the emergency care files of the injured persons. The analysis of the personal variables was based on: demographic issues, the categories involved in road accidents and the patient's status at the crash scene.
RESULTS: More male (61.7%) were injured than female, the male: female ratio of injuries being 5/3. Of the total 4028 cases recorded along the three years, 806 were young people aged 20-29 years and of these, male subjects represented 74.2%. A strong negative correlation was found between age and the number of subjects by age groups (r = -0.96). More than two thirds (68.7%) of the total sample are living in urban area, the urban/rural ratio being 2/1. Car occupants represented 91.7% of the total injured cases, followed by the motorized 2-wheelers drivers (4.7%), pedestrians (1.5%), wagon drivers (1.1%) and cyclists (1%). Approximately two persons of one hundred casualties (1.9%) were found deceased at the scene of the crash. The severe unconscious cases and the deceased combined accounted 6% of all cases. An analysis of the fatalities by gender pointed out a higher death rate among male (2.9%), compared to 0.4% among female, the difference being strong significant (p<0.001). The repartition of the total deaths by road user category placed on the first place the car occupants (52.6%), followed by motorized 2-wheelers drivers (23.1%), pedestrian (20.5%) and wagon drivers (3.8%). The severity of the injury has been assessed and revealed four risk factors: male gender, pedestrian, cyclist and motorized 2-wheelers. The odds ratio values ranged from 8.19 for pedestrians to 2.81 for motorized 2-wheelers drivers.
CONCLUSIONS: All these findings allow a profile of the people affected most frequent by the road traffic injuries, representing casualties taken over by the Iasi County Ambulance Service in the interval 2013-2015: young male, aged 20-29, urban resident, car occupant. The most severe cases were found among male of three road user categories: pedestrian, cyclist and motorized 2-wheelers.
KEYWORDS: Bicycles; Bicyclists; Bicycling
Language: en |