Modern Medicine Is Neglecting Road Traffic Crashes: e1001463

Summary Points * Despite a high burden of disease, motor vehicle trauma has not generated proportionate attention in clinical medicine, public health agencies, or the wider community. * The relative neglect arises in part from a denial of aggregate statistics, the banality of everyday crashes, and t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS medicine 2013-06, Vol.10 (6)
Main Authors: Redelmeier, Donald A, McLellan, Barry A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Automobile drivers
Automobile safety
Disease
Fatalities
Medical research
Medicine
Mortality
Patients
Prostate cancer
Public health
Science
Traffic accidents & safety
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Summary:Summary Points * Despite a high burden of disease, motor vehicle trauma has not generated proportionate attention in clinical medicine, public health agencies, or the wider community. * The relative neglect arises in part from a denial of aggregate statistics, the banality of everyday crashes, and the lack of a labelled lobby group. * Further clinical factors include biased beliefs among surviving patients, segregation of clinical services, inescapable research limitations, and idiosyncratic scientific traditions. * Additional policy barriers arise from conflicting economic priorities, fundamental insuperability, and inescapable cultural diversity. * Significant progress toward mitigating motor vehicle trauma will likely continue by modest positive incremental gains in road safety. Clinical Steps to Improve Motor Vehicle Safety * Treat seizures, syncope, mania, and other debilitating conditions that would otherwise make the patient at risk for a traffic crash. * Emphasize cautions against driving when treating patients acutely with narcotics, sedatives, brain radiation, or other interventions that cause short-term impairments. * Give medical warnings to patients who have uncontrolled alcoholism, sleep apnea, or other chronic diseases that make the patient unfit to drive. * Consider use of informal assessment tools that are available for screening indeterminate patients for fitness to drive, taking into account the effectiveness of such prevention strategies is uncertain. * Follow acute resuscitation protocols in the aftermath of a serious traffic crash and extend to include counselling of survivors to prevent trauma recidivism.
ISSN:1549-1277
1549-1676
DOI:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001463