HOSPITAL REPORTED FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH MORTALITY AMONG ROAD TRAFFIC ACCIDENT VICTIMS IN SOUTHERN THAILAND

Road traffic accidents are a major cause of mortality in Thailand. We aimed to determine the hospital reported factors associated with mortality among road traffic accidents in southern Thailand in order to inform road traffic mortality prevention programs. We accessed data reported to the Office of Disease Prevention and Control, Thailand during 2008-2013 by hospitals in Nakhon. Si Thammarat and Surat Thani Provinces, southern. Thailand. We used the chi-square test to examine the associations between selected variables and mortality and multivariate logistic regression analysis to determine factors significantly associated with mortality. In the study location during the study period, there were 41,848 reported traffic injuries with 2,341 deaths. Eighty-four percent of victims were males, 78.3% involved a motorcycle and 65% did not wear their helmets. Older age, being a pedestrian, not fastening a seat belt in a blunt trauma patient and having poor clinical signs were significantly associated with mortality. These findings confirm that motor vehicle drivers and passengers need to be targeted to fasten seat belt, in order to reduce road accident mortality.