A Study on Cases of Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) Referred to Ain Shams University Hospitals during Two Years (2017, 2018) Period: do Biomechanics Laws Help in Forensic Investigation of Injuries and Deaths?

Abstract

Road traffic injuries are a major public health issue. The World Health Organization defines road traffic injury (RTI) as a fatal or nonfatal injury incurred as a result of a collision on a public road involving at least one or more moving vehicles and/or pedestrians. It is a major but neglected public health challenge that requires concerted efforts for effective and sustainable prevention. Worldwide, an estimated 1.2 million people are killed in road crashes each year and as many as 50 million are injured. Egypt loses about 12,000 people every year because of road traffic accidents. It has a road traffic mortality rate of 42 deaths per 100,000 population. Egypt's state statistics agency (The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) has revealed that year (2018) saw 8,480 road accidents within the country. The aim of this work is to determine the pattern and status of road traffic accidents injuries and deaths, to evaluate the current status of medicolegal measurements of dealing with victims of accidents to assess the degree of medical orientation about forensic needs, and to clarify the impact of applying biomechanics principles in medicolegal investigation of the nature of accidents and the mechanisms of fatal injuries. A retrospective epidemiological study was designed to determine the pattern and status of road traffic accidents injuries and deaths referred to the emergency department of Ain Shams University Hospital, and to evaluate the current status of medicolegal measurements for dealing with victims of accidents to assess the degree of medical orientation about forensic needs, in addition to clarifying the impact of applying biomechanics principles to the nature of accidents and the mechanisms of fatal injuries during medicolegal investigation. This study was held at El Demerdash Hospital-Ain Shams University, in the period from the start of 2017 to the end of 2018, based on the data collected from patient sheets. This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (REC) of Ain Shams University, code number (FWA00017585). Data was collected, revised, coded and entered into the Statistical Package for Social Science (IBM SPSS) version 23. The quantitative data was presented as mean, standard deviations, and ranges. Also, qualitative variables were presented as numbers and percentages. The comparison between groups regarding qualitative data was done by the Chi Square test. The confidence interval was set at 95% and the margin of error accepted was set at 5%. So, the p-value was considered significant as the following: P-value > 0.05: Nonsignificant (NS), P-value < 0.05: Significant (S), P-value < 0.01: Highly significant (HS).