Prevalence of road traffic accident in children: retrospective study in tertiary centre

Abstract

Background: Road traffic accidents (RTA) are the leading cause of unnatural deaths in the world and a major burden on the world’s economy. The aim was to study the prevalence of road traffic accident among children.Methods: It is a retrospective cross sectional study. Data collected from the hospital records in PICU. Children studied are either admitted directly for road traffic accident or referred to our centre for complicated injuries. children of 1 to 18 years are studied, details of address, locality (either rural, urban) road safety precautions used, mode of injury, type of vehicle, type of injury, number of passengers, complications, outcome of injury are collected and entered in prescribed proforma, and impact of each one is analysed and magnitude is studied. Study period was from June 2014 to June 2016.Results: This study shows that road traffic accident prevalence is more in 15-18 year age group (31%), and males are affected more commonly (79.5%), among these majority of children were from rural area (73%), more common type of injury were complicated injuries (85.1%). Children travelling in 2 wheelers were affected more (74.9%). Results analysed with age of victims and type of injury, p value <0.05 is considered significant.Conclusions: To bring the mortality rate down, children especially with rural background should be made aware about the importance of strict compliance to traffic rules and regulations. Government need to start implementing traffic rules awareness programme among rural people.