ABSTRACT
Introduction: Traumatic Brain Injury [TBI] is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Each year 50000 deaths in the United States are associated with TBI, representing more than 33% of all injury -related deaths. Motor- Vehicle accidents are the major causes of TBI that its occurrence has been increasing in our country in recent years
Objective: We decided to study TBI in our region to evaluate the Epidemiological features of this health problem
Materials and Methods: In a six- month period in 2001, we reviewed TBI-patients records in Rasht Poorsina hospital and data such as age, sex, mechanisms of trauma and Radiological findings were collected. We staged the severity of trauma by Glasgow Coma - Scale. Data were analyzed by SPSS software. We used Chi-Square test and P-Value less than 0.05 was considered significant
Results: From the total of 715 patients, 79.3% were males and 20.7% were females with a male to female ratio of 2.6 to 1. The most common age group was 15-24 years. Majority of patients were students. The most frequent mechanism of trauma was motor-vehicle accident. 89.7% of injuries were mild in severity. There was a significant relation between C.T Scan findings and severity of injuries. [P<0.0001] Isolated brain injury was seen in 71.6% of patients
Conclusion: This study showed that we should pay more attention to TBI in young patients who are the most active potential forces of our society