Accidents involving electric scooters can cause injuries as serious as those involving motorcycles or bicycles, the Paris hospitals (AP-HP) report as they unveil the results of a new study on Friday.
The anesthesia-resuscitation departments that make up the Traumabase research group, the Pitié-Salpêtrière AP-HP hospital, the Sorbonne University and Inserm have studied the severity of injuries after traffic accidents involving motorized vehicles for transporting people ( EDPM), in particular scooters (but also electric monowheels, Segways, etc.). Their findings were published June 30 in the JAMA Network Open journal.
All patients admitted to one of the 26 trauma centers participating in the study after a traffic accident with EDPM, bicycle or motorcycle between January 1, 2019 and December 20, 2022 were included, representing 5,233. patients with a median age of 33 years. .
The study shows that the number of patients admitted for change after a traffic accident with the use of an EDPM was multiplied by 2.8 in 4 years, or 229 seriously injured patients in this period.
EDPM drivers suffered serious injuries in 45.5% of cases compared to 39.7% of motorcyclists and 47.3% of cyclists.
They were twice as likely to suffer head injuries, more severe than those of motorcyclists, probably because only less than 25% were wearing helmets at the time of the accident, the study highlights.
Another lesson is that serious accidents with EDPM occurred more frequently at night and on weekends in a context of alcohol consumption above the legal threshold in one third of cases.
A stay in intensive care for three quarters of patients
These patients required surgery within the first 24 hours after the accident in two thirds of the cases: mainly repair surgery for limb fractures but also neurosurgery.
Three quarters of these patients were hospitalized in intensive care. Hospitalization was often long (15 days on average) and 9% of seriously injured EDPM users died, mostly due to severe head trauma.
Thus, EDPMs are means of transportation that can be associated with particularly severe injuries, just like motorcycles or bicycles, the study concludes, considering that during their medical treatment, their users should be considered potentially seriously traumatized.
Source: BFM TV
