Evaluation of disability cases due to road traffic accidents applied to department of forensic medicine

Introduction and Objective: The physical and mental losses and their rates in individuals constitute an important field of clinical forensic medicine practices. The increase in the number of vehicles on the traffic every year also increases the accidents, injuries and disabilities. A person who harms someone else in a flawed manner and with an unlawful act is obliged to remedy this damage. For this reason, it is necessary to know the damages and rates. In this study, it was aimed to draw attention to the factors that should be taken into consideration when preparing a report to the cases, the sociodemographic and medical characteristics of the cases, the effect of the characteristics of the accident on disability, the awareness of the cases about the disability reports who applied to the Department of Forensic Medicine of Cukurova University Faculty of Medicine to obtain disability reports as a result of a traffic accidents. Materials and Methods: A questionnaire study was conducted for the cases who applied to the Forensic Medicine Department of Çukurova University Faculty of Medicine between June 2019-June 2020 to obtain disability reports. The answers obtained from the questionnaire and the disability reports prepared were evaluated together. While evaluating the findings obtained from the study, SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for Windows 25.0 program was used for statistical analysis. Results: 641 cases were evaluated in our study. 476 (74,3 %) of the cases were male and 165 (27,7 %) were female. The age range was between 2 -76 ages and it was observed that most of the cases were in the 20-29 age group. It was determined that the accidents were most common in September, most frequently in the autumn season, and the most frequent in the daytime interval compared to daylight. Motorcycles ( 45,2 %) were the most frequently engaged vehicle in traffic accidents. It was observed that upper extremity injuries in vehicle traffic accidents and lower extremity injuries in motorcycle and pedestrian accidents were higher. It was found that 93,1 % (n: 597) of the cases were hospitalized and 74,6 % (n: 478) of them underwent surgical treatment after the accident. The average rate of disability was 17,4 %. It was observed that disability reports were issued mostly due to Musculoskeletal System malfunctions (95,2 %). Conclusion: Traffic accidents are an important public health problem. Therefore, efforts should be made to minimize traffic accidents and reduce deaths, injuries and related disability. A common practice should be developed for disability reports to be fair and consistent. A regulation should be prepared in accordance with scientific and international literature, in which physicians working in forensic medicine and other specialties will work together to develop a common approach. It should be revised regularly, taking into account the changing current treatment approaches. Keywords: Forensic Medicine, Disability, Compensation, Traffic Accident, Injury