PERFIL EPIDEMIOLÓGICO DAS VÍTIMAS DE ACIDENTES DE TRÂNSITO ATENDIDAS NUM SERVIÇO PÚBLICO DE EMERGÊNCIA DA REGIÃO METROPOLITANA DE NATAL/RN.

Due to the frequency of occurrence and severity, traffic accidents are characterized as epidemics for current societies and enter the public health agenda as morbimortalities due to external causes, leading to a series of individual and social damages, as well as high costs to the health system and occurrences of temporary or permanent sequelae, until disability and death. Given the relevance of the theme, this paper aims to describe the profile of the victims of traffic accidents patients attended at the emergency and emergency service of the Monsenhor Walfredo Gurgel Hospital, it is a reference hospital at Natal city, Brazil. This is a cross-sectional study, including 10,377 traffic accident victim patients attended in the period from January 1 to December 31, 2014. The results indicate that most of the victims were male (76.7%); motorcycles are the type of vehicle most involved in accidents (74.2%) and the age group with the highest incidence was 21 to 30 years (33.93 %). The main diagnoses were: excoriation and cut (25.5%); contusion, sprain and dislocation (23%); fractures (21.1%); traumatic brain injury (13.9%) and polytrauma (8.8%). The results are in agreement with other studies of the national literature. As a general conclusion, there is a need for urgent application of preventive and control actions, mainly aimed at young male motorcycle drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]