Injury Patterns among Special Populations Involved in Pedestrian Crashes 2010-01-1165

Over half of the 1.2 million annual traffic fatalities worldwide are pedestrians struck by motor vehicles [ 1 ]. Medical databases, such as the National Inpatient Sample (NIS), have been utilized to ascertain injury patterns in the general population of injured pedestrians [ 2 - 3 ]. However, the authors are not aware of any studies investigating how factors, such as physical impairments, intoxication, and pre-existing medical implants (e.g. hip replacement, artificial knee, etc.) affect the prevalence of pedestrian accidents or injury outcomes. Five to eight million inpatient hospitalization records are included in the NIS annually, and this large sample size allows for analyses that are not possible with smaller data sets on pedestrian injuries. The current study utilizes the NIS to evaluate how several factors such as blindness, deafness, intoxication, and pre-existing medical implants affect injury patterns when compared to the general population of hospitalized pedestrians. In the deaf population, the most common injury diagnoses involved the head, face, and neck, whereas in the blind and medical device populations, the most common injury diagnoses involved the lower extremities. Intoxicated individuals accounted for almost 20% of injured pedestrians, and the injury patterns of the intoxicated pedestrians were largely similar to the control population, although some statistically significant differences were found. Further breakdowns of the injury patterns in each of these populations are presented and discussed.