Health Science Monitor

en Five-year epidemiology of head, neck, and spinal cord injuries in West Azerbaijan province ارتقای سلامت، پیشگیری و کنترل بیماری‌ ها Health Promotion, Protection, and Disease Control پژوهشي Research Article Background & Aims: 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. Materials & Methods: 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. Results: 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). Conclusion: 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. Epidemiology, Head, Neck, Spinal cord, Trauma 105 112 http://hsm.umsu.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-100-3&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Vahid Hosseinpour hamidhosseinpour87@gmail.com 10031947532846002478 10031947532846002478 No Department of Emergency Medicine, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran Bahlol Rahimi hamidhosseinpour87@gmail.com 10031947532846002479 10031947532846002479 No Health and Biomedical Informatics Research Center, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran and Department of Health Information Technology, School of Allied Medical Sciences, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran Hadi Lotfnejad Afshar hamidhosseinpour87@gmail.com 10031947532846002480 10031947532846002480 No Health and Biomedical Informatics Research Center, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran and Department of Health Information Technology, School of Allied Medical Sciences, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran Hamid Hosseinpour hamidhosseinpour87@gmail.com 10031947532846002481 10031947532846002481 Yes Department of Neurology, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran (Corresponding Author) Rohollah Valizadeh rohvali4@gmail.com 10031947532846002482 10031947532846002482 No Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran (Corresponding Author)