Traffic injury prevention
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Traffic injury prevention · Sep 2003
Head and neck injuries in fatal motorcycle collisions as determined by detailed autopsy.
Detailed layer-by-layer autopsy of the head and neck was performed on a prospective series of 73 fatally injured motorcyclists in order to identify occult injuries, particularly soft tissue neck injuries such as hemorrhage of vertebral and carotid arteries. The fatal cases were gathered as part of a larger study of 1,082 on-scene in-depth motorcycle crash investigations in Thailand. Detailed neck dissection was done on nearly all fatal cases. ⋯ The most significant finding of this study was the identification of serious internal neck injuries despite the absence of external physical evidence of trauma to the neck. Virtually all riders with significant head injuries showed some of these soft tissue neck injuries. Approximately one-third of the critically injured riders who survived at least a few hours before death showed serious occult soft tissue neck injuries.