Nature and severity of injuries in traffic accident victims

Abstract

The objective of this retrospective study is to characterize the nature and severity of injuries of hospitalized traffic accident victims using the "Abbreviated Injury Scale" (AIS). Two-hundred and twenty such patients in a trauma reference hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil were assessed. One-hundred and eleven of them were pedestrians, eighty three vehicular passengers and twenty-six motorcyclists. The most common injuries were of the limbs, pelvic girdle and head/neck. Injury severity in all these patients was AIS= 3. Two-thirds of the forty-five victims who died were pedestrians.