The epidemiology of the railway related casualties.
BACKGROUND
Railway related accidents and incidents account for 150-200 deaths per 100 million passengers annually in Turkey. The aim of this study was to evaluate the epidemiological aspects of these casualties.


METHODS
The data about railway related casualties between January 1997 and December 2003 were retrospectively analyzed in Turkey.


RESULTS
Railway related accidents and incidents resulted in 213,3 deaths per year per 100 million passengers during the study period. Train-pedestrian accidents caused highest number of mortality and level crossing accidents caused highest numbers of casualty. Furthermore, suicide attempts had highest mortality ratio in railway related accidents. The majority of the fatalities and injuries occurred in males for every type of incident and most of the injuries have taken place in the 25-60 age group. Summer time was the season with the highest number of fatalities and injuries.


CONCLUSIONS
Measures should be taken to improve railway safety. These include prevention of direct exposure of pedestrians to the railway tracts and conditioning the level crossings.
Ozdoğan
Mehmet
M
3rd Department of General Surgery, Atatürk Training and Research Hospital, 06510 Beştepe, Ankara, Turkey. mehmetozdogan01@superonline.com
Cakar
Sami
S
Ağalar
Fatih
F
Eryilmaz
Mehmet
M
Aytaç
Bülent
B
Aydinuraz
Kuzey
K
D000059:Accidents; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015601:Injury Severity Score; D008297:Male; D008499:Medical Records; D008875:Middle Aged; D009104:Multiple Trauma / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000517:prevention & control; D011890:Railroads; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012449:Safety; D012621:Seasons; D014421:Turkey / Q000453:epidemiology