Head and face injuries and helmet use among injured motorcyclists with road accidents in Isfahan, Iran

Background and aim: the study aimed to assess the frequency of head and face injuries in motorcyclists who had anaccident and to find out the relationship between helmet use and frequency of these injuries.methods: a cross-sectional study with multi-stage sampling method provides data on the injured motorcyclists withroad accidents. data came from a registration form which has documented information of each injured person who hada road accident and hospitalized in the biggest hospital of isfahan university of medical sciences, iran (al-zahra). allthe registration forms were surveyed for hospitalization period, treatment costs, severity of injury, and date of accidentduring 2010 (n = 1626). later, among the list of injured motorcyclists during the last 3 months of the registration form,125 cases were randomly selected and interviewed by phone regarding occurrence of the head and face injuries andwhether wearing helmet during the accident. confidence intervals (ci), chi-square, and phi and cramer’s correlationcoefficient were applied. the ethical approval was provided.results: accident by motorcycle was 31.0% of all road accidents. the frequency of motorcycle accidents was higherin the autumn and among 21-25 year olds. the mean period of hospitalization was 4.3 days and the mean of hospitalcosts was about 9000000 rials [about 8200 united states dollar (usd), in 2010]. of motorcyclist, 35.0% reported theywere helmeted when they had the accident. the frequency of head and face injuries was 51.0% among all the injuredmotorcyclists, 22.0% and 78.0% among the helmeted and non-helmeted motorcyclists, respectively (p = 0.009,r = -0.267).conclusion: motorcycle accidents comprise a large number of road accidents and cause substantial morbidity andfinancial impact for the community members. head and face injuries are the most common trauma in motorcyclists, andthe injury rate is higher among non-helmeted motorcyclists.