Five-year epidemiology of head, neck, and spinal cord injuries in West Azerbaijan province

Considering that trauma is one of the important causes of death, especially head and neck trauma, knowledge of the epidemiology of trauma can be of great help in making management decisions. This study examined the 5-year epidemiology of head, neck, and spinal cord injuries in West Azerbaijan province.

In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 6,336 trauma patients who resided in the province of West Azerbaijan were included between 2019 and 2023. The province's national trauma registration program provided the data collection form. Individuals whose medical records were incomplete were not included.

The mean age of the patients was 33.39 years. The most common cause of trauma was road traffic accidents (38.3%, N = 2429), followed by falls (23.1%, N = 1461). At the moment of the accident, 107 patients were using alcohol, 45 patients had drug abuse, and 56 patients took tranquilizers like benzodiazepine; in total, 443 patients needed transfusion. The mean stay at the ICU and hospital was 8.49 ± 3.76 days and 5.05 ± 1.25 days, respectively. Many of the injured patients had a moderate (46.4%) and minor (31.1%) Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) in the assessment, in which male gender had poor condition in this regard (p < 0.001).

There are many injured individuals with low levels of education, indicating the urgent need to raise awareness among this group to help prevent road accidents. Post-trauma measures are clearly important, particularly in the fields of orthopedics, general surgery, and head and neck trauma.