An epidemiological study and determination of causes of traffic accident-related deaths in Tehran, Iran (during 2000-2001).

Traffic accidents are an important cause of traumatic death particularly in developing countries such as Iran. One of the most principal steps in prevention and control of traffic accident-related trauma and its deaths is having information about demographic characters of its victims and their cause of deaths. Our cross sectional study deals with all of the cases of traffic accident-related deaths which were referred to the Tehran Legal Medicine Organization. This survey covers one year from March 20th, 2000 to March 24th, 2001. All the victims' files were studied. Number of traffic accident-related deaths were 2128 (25% of all of cases which were referred to this centre for determination of cause of death). Male to female ratio was 4.1 to 1. Most of deaths have been between 21 and 30 years old (22.1%). Mean age was 39.4 year (SD: 21.9 yr). Seasonal variation was not seen. Twenty-seven percent of cases were died at the scene and 72.7% in hospital. The most common cause of death was head injury (49.8%), the other causes were multiple trauma (35%), internal bleeding and visceral laceration(11.1%), cervical spinal cord injury (1.9%), complications of trauma (1.6%) and others (0.6%), respectively. These findings were compared with other surveys and authors recommend some suggestions such as public education of traffic rules, obligatory use of seat-belts, wearing of crash-helmet, attention to preventable causes of death, etc.