ELECTRIC SCOOTER-RELATED ORTHOPAEDIC INJURIES

Abstract

The e-scooter trial was part of a wider initiative from the Department for Transport in response to COVID pandemic. New emergency legislation was introduced in 2020 to make e-scooters legal in the UK for the first time. This scheme was launched in our county from September 2020. The aim of this case series was to identify the types of Orthopedic injuries resultant from electric scooter transport that presented to our District General Hospital over a 16-month period between September 2020 and December 2021.This study involved retrospective collection of data from electronic hospital records. Data on demographics, laterality, date of injury, type of injury, treatment, HDU/ITU admissions, mortality, and operating time were collected to characterize the types of e-scooter-related injuries and to investigate the frequency of such injuries over the duration of our search.A total of 79 orthopedic patients identified with electric scooter injuries between September 2020 and December 2021. 78.5% were males and the mean age was 30.1 years. Summer months accounted for most of the injuries. 17 patients required inpatient care. 23 patients required surgical intervention and a total of 29 surgeries were performed in our hospital. This accounted for a total surgical time of 2088 minutes. One patient admitted with shaft of femur fracture developed pulmonary embolism after the definitive operation and died in HDU.Electric scooters provide a space efficient, affordable, environmentally friendly mode of transportation which reduce the urban congestion and parking issues. This study demonstrates an increasing frequency of significant orthopedic injury associated with e-scooter use treated at our centre over the course of 16 months. This small series underlines an important problem given that this increase has occurred after the start of the electric scooter trial. Legalization might result in further increase in the incidence of injury.