Epidemiological profile of extremity fractures in victims of motorcycle accidents

Abstract

Objective: Show the epidemiological profile of limb fractures invictim of motorcycle accident seen at the Emergency Departmentof Hospital Universitário Evangélico de Curitiba (HUEC),Curitiba, PR, Brazil, from January 2007 to December 2013, aswell as to compare the results with data from the literature. Methods:This is a retrospective, descriptive, observational study. Theinformation was obtained from the analysis of all the medicalrecords from January 2007 to December 2013 belonging to thehospital archives. Only extremity fractures cases from motorcycleaccident victims were analyzed, according to the medicalrecords and radiological reports. The ICD-10 was used asclassification criterion, and the fractures were grouped dependingon the topography of the injury. The following variables wereconsidered: number of victims, gender, age and fracture site,in order to create a database to contrast with the literature. Results:During seven years, 3,528 motorcycle accident victimshave been identified, 88.29% being male, whereas 11.71% beingfemale. The average age of the victims was 29.7 years old,observing a strong inverse correlation between the number ofvictims and their ages. There has been 4,365 fractures, being59.66% in lower limbs and 40.34% in upper limbs. From that total,18.14% were leg fractures, 11.57% were hand fractures and10.65% were wrist fractures. Conclusion: This study has met itsobjectives and the results were similar to the national literature.