Investigation of demographic and clinical characteristics of patients who admitted to the emergency department due to motorcycle accidents before and after the COVID-19 pandemic

Aim:The aim of this study is to investigate the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients who applied to the emergency department of Ankara University Faculty of Medicine Ibn-i Sina Hospital due to motorcycle accidents before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and Methods:Our study is a retrospective cohort study. The first COVID-19 case in Türkiye was reported on March 11, 2020, by the Ministry of Health. Patients who applied to the Emergency Department due to motorcycle accidents in the 2-year period before the pandemic and in the 2-year period after the pandemic were examined. In our study, patients who were younger than 18 years of age or whose main outcome variable, the Injury Severity Score (ISS), could not be calculated due to lack of data, were excluded. The patient's age, gender, admission period, admission time, working status as a courier, ISS values, and injury types were examined. In our study, the presence of major trauma (ISS >15) was accepted as the primary endpoint. For comparisons between groups, Chi-square or Fisher's exact test was used for categorical variables. Student's t-test was used when the number of independent groups was two for normally distributed continuous variables, and Mann Whitney U test was used for non-normally distributed variables. P <0.05 was accepted for statistical significance. Results:Our study included 112 patients in the pre-pandemic period and 354 patients in the post-pandemic period who applied to the emergency department due to motorcycle accidents. It was determined that 425 (91.2%) of the patients included in our study were male and 41 (8.8%) were female. The mean age of the patients was 28.98±9.75 years. When the admission times of the patients were examined, it was determined that the most frequent admission time was between 16.00 and 23.59 (n = 264 and 56.7%). It was determined that 21.2% (n=99) of the patients were couriers. When the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic periods were compared, we found that the male rate in motorcycle accidents admitted in the post-pandemic period was significantly higher (84.8% and 93.2% p=0.006). We found that the median age of patients admitted in the post-pandemic period was lower (28 and 25 years p=0.005). It was determined that 9.8% (n=11) of the patients admitted in the pre-pandemic period and 24.9% (n=88) of the patients admitted in the post-pandemic period were couriers (p=0.001). We did not found any difference between the ISS values of patients admitted before and after the pandemic (median: 1; IQR=4 and 1; IQR=5) (p=0.461). The primary endpoint in our study was ISS>15. It was determined that 4.5% (n=5) of the patients admitted in the pre-pandemic period had ISS >15, and 4.8% (n=17) of the patients admitted in the post-pandemic period had ISS >15, and there was no difference between the two periods (p =0.883). In our study, we found that the most common injury types were lower extremity fractures (13.4%) and upper extremity fractures (8%) and that there was no difference in injury types before and after the pandemic. Conclusions:We found that ISS scores and major trauma rates in motorcycle accidents were not significantly different between the pre-pandemic period and the post-pandemic period. It was observed that there was a significant increase in motorcycle accidents in the post-pandemic period compared to the pre-pandemic period. We found that the rate of couriers in motorcycle accidents was higher in the post-pandemic period than in the pre-pandemic period. Increasing home delivery and cargo services after the pandemic period may have led to an increase in the number of motorcycle couriers and motorcycle accidents. Key words: COVID-19, Injury Severity Score, Courier, Motorcycle accident, Pandemic.