Road traffic accidents presenting to the emergency department of a tertiary care hospital in North-East India: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Road traffic accidents (RTA) are one of the most common cases brought to a hospital daily. The severity of the situation is not known to most of the masses. It has a high chance of mortality and high disabling capacity due to injuries to the main vital parts of the body. : A cross-sectional study was conducted to analyse the pattern of road traffic accidents as regards the type of victims, offending vehicle, place & time of occurrence, type of injuries sustained, fatality among the RTA victims admitted in the emergency department of a tertiary care hospital in North-East India during January 2021-June 2022. A total of 1002 RTA cases were reviewed, and it was found that most of the RTA (76.3%) were males and 32.7% of the cases belonged to the age group of 21-30 years, followed by the age group of 31-40 years (20.5%). RTAs commonly occurred between 12:01 p.m-6 p.m.; the offending vehicles were 4-wheelers (38%) followed by 2-wheelers (36.4%). Most of the victims were 2-wheeler riders (62.2%) followed by pedestrians (16.8%); the head & face were most affected body parts (42.2%) followed by lower limbs (30.6%) and Imphal West was the most common place of occurrence (48.8%). With the increasing use of motor vehicles, the number of road traffic accidents is rising. It is important to find a pattern of these cases in this part of the country so that we can prevent such unfortunate and unnatural deaths.