[The analysis of patients with body traumas treated in the Military Medical Academy's Second Clinical Hospital of the Medical University of Lodz].

According to recent WHO reports, body traumas are ranked third with respect of frequency of occurrence right after cardiovascular diseases and tumours, and are considered one of the major medical problems. Trauma is a kind of energy (mechanical, thermal or chemical) affecting the human body. After crossing the threshold of tissue endurance, an injury or damage occurs. A common problem of all the centres that treat traumas is a reliable and comparable assessment of injury severity. Constant improvement of the trauma scores, contributes to increased objectivity of the assessment of injury severity and makes trauma research easier. To a large extent, commonness of the scores enables the exchange of experiences with respect to treating patients after trauma. An ideal scale should be reliable, easy to use, and most of all commonly used, thus enabling the employment of a common "traumatologic" language. In the following research, the test group was comprised of 137 adult patients including 113 men (82%) and 24 women (18%). Most patients were aged from 20 to 60 years, that is, in the productive age. Appropriate trauma treatment results in the reduction of the costs of hospitalisation time of those patients and their recovery. An accident or worse still death of a young person is not only a personal tragedy for the family. It is also a big economic loss for the society which results from "lost years of life" and thus "lost years of work". Quick and appropriate treatment, done in a proper centre with appropriately trained staff and highest quality equipment will allow not only to reduce the victim's suffering and return to their daily life, but also minimise the social costs connected with disability pensions, benefits and compensations. Most injuries happened at work--61% were probably due to haste but most of all not complying with occupational health and safety regulations, which all employees should know and comply with. It involves doctors writing a sick note for the injured which undoubtedly involves much bigger losses for the employer and social costs in a form of increased premiums for healthcare plans. The most common mechanism of the injuries was self-injury (66.7%). In the study population, even 87% of the victims suffered from isolated body injuries. As is apparent from the analysed data, one should provide money for short-term health care, i.e. up to 2 days. The average treatment time for the study population was 4 days, with the maximum of 23 days. Most patients (60%) were brought by emergency medical services.