Traumatic Brain Injury Caused by Motor Vehicle Collision and Alcoholism in Piauí

Objectives To determine the relationship between alcohol consumption and the incidence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) with diffuse axonal injury (DAI), determining these indices, checking acquired comorbidities and characterizing the patients by gender, age and race/color, as well as describing the characteristics of the motor vehicle collision (vehicle, period of the day, day of the week and site) in people admitted to an emergency hospital in the city of Teresina, in the state of Piauí, Brazil. Methods We have analyzed the data contained in the medical records of patients admitted with a history of motor vehicle collision and severe TBI in intensive care units, based on the forms provided by the Mobile Emergency Care Service (SAMU, in the Portuguese acronym) in the period between February 28 and November 28, 2013. Results In the period covered by the present study, 200 individuals were analyzed, and 54 (27%) had consumed alcohol; of these 11 had DAI. Of the total sample, 17% (34) presented DAI, however, with unknown data regarding the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Conclusion Considering the data, we observed that the profile of the head trauma patients are brown men, mostly (53.5%) aged between 15 and 30 years. The collisions occurred mostly on weekends and at night (55%), and 89.5% of the crashes involved motorcycles.