Pre-hospital care of the injured in South Western Nigeria: a hospital based study of four tertiary level hospitals in three states.

Pre-hospital care in developing worlds has been found to be grossly deficient compared to high income countries. The pre-hospital care given to road accident victims attending the casualty departments of four tertiary level hospitals in South Western Nigeria was assessed using a one-page pro-forma. 1996 patients with injuries from road crashes were seen in the hospitals, only 172 had any form of pre-hospital care, just 160 were transported in ambulances and none had any form of organized pre-hospital care. The mean arrival time in the hospital after crashes was 93.6 minutes and there was a high rate (29.5%) of inter-hospital referral. For every Revised Trauma Score (RTS), the Probability of survival (Ps) of the patients was higher than the Ps of patients from high income countries.