60% of patients suffer facial trauma in electric scooter accidents

The number of electric scooter accidents is rising every year, and the government should introduce a system for renting a helmet along with an electric scooter to prevent craniofacial trauma, a medical paper said.

A research team at the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery of Chonnam National University Hospital recently published their study, titled “Electric Scooter-Related Trauma in Korea,” in the Journal of Korean Medical Science.

The research team reviewed 108 patients who visited the regional trauma center due to electric scooter accidents from April 2018 to October 2021. The researchers analyzed various information, including helmet-wearing status and the trauma region.

The number of patients who sought medical help due to injuries from electric scooter accidents went up from five in 2018 to 18 in 2019, 30 in 2020, and 55 in 2021.

The study found that among the 108 patients involved in such accidents, 92 (85 percent) were not wearing a helmet.

In the Injury Severity Score (ISS), there was no significant difference between the helmet-wearing patients and those without it. However, 14 out of the 15 patients with severe trauma and five patients with lethal outcomes such as death were not wearing a helmet at the time of injury. In addition, of the 18 patients admitted to the intensive care unit, 16 did not wear a helmet.

Most of the patients without a helmet suffered facial trauma, and among them, lacerations were the most frequent.

Injury patterns by body part showed that 60.2 percent of the 108 patients had facial trauma, 21.3 percent, the head, 14.8 percent, upper extremity, 9.3 percent, lower extremity, 6.5 percent, chest, and 2.8 percent, abdomen.

Out of the 65 patients with facial trauma, 58 (89 percent) did not wear a helmet. Among the 58, 84.5 percent had lacerations, 53.4 percent abrasions, and 27.6 percent had bone fractures.

The research team noted that because the study relied on medical records of patients who visited the regional trauma center, patients without severe wounds or fractures who visited other local clinics might have been omitted.

However, the research team said the findings were meaningful because the study was on electric scooter-related accidents according to whether a helmet is worn for the first time in Korea.

“The most frequent trauma region in electric scooter accidents was the craniofacial region, and wearing a helmet was determined to be the best way to prevent craniofacial trauma,” the research team concluded.

Given the excessively low helmet-wearing rate despite the Road Traffic Act mandating the helmet-wearing, the government should urgently introduce a helmet renting system for electric scooters, the research team added.