Epidemiology of motor cycle accidents in Rasht, 2011-2012

The road accidents is a major problem of health system. According to importance of motor cycle accidents and lack of similar studies in this province, we aimed to survey the epidemiology of the motor cycle accidents in Rasht. this descriptive cross sectional study was done among all patients with motorcycle accident admitted to emergency department of Poursina hospital of Rasht between 2011 and 2012. Variables such as age, gender, mechanism of accident, season, day of hospitalization, anatomic part of truma, presence of fracture or dislocation, need of surgery and mortality rate were assessed. Data were analyzed with SPSS software version 16. a total of 3013 cases with motorcycle accident were assessed which 91.7 percent of them was men. The mean age of cases was 29.74± 14.38 years and 35.2 of cases aged 21-30 years old. The 59.4 percentage of referred accidents patients were those caused by the "motorcycle-car accident". The most (34.1%) of patients who had suffered from accidents caused by motorcycle was in summer. The most parts of injuries were head and neck (23.2%), facial injuries (22%), lower extremity injuries (21.9%) and upper extremity (18.9%) respectively. Mortality rate was 2.5%. this study showed that motorcycle accidents were more common in young male in summer. The implementation and strengthening of safety rules and set the age limit for motorcycle riders might be able to reduce accidents in the community.