Can helmet decrease mortality of craniocerebral trauma patients in a motorcycle accident?: A propensity score matching

Abstract

A helmet is critical for preventing head injuries during motorcycle accidents. However, South Korean motorcyclists have a lower prevalence of wearing a helmet, compared to developed countries. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate whether helmet wearing was associated with the clinical outcomes in Korean motorcycle accidents. Data were obtained from the Emergency Department-based Injury In-depth Surveillance database 2011–2015. We considered the patients had experienced a motorcycle accident and were only diagnosed with a craniocerebral trauma (CCT). The primary outcome was mortality and the secondary outcomes were the severity and hospitalization duration. The patients were separated whether they were wearing a helmet and the outcomes were compared using multivariate logistic regression after propensity score matching (PSM). Among 1,254,250 patients in the database, 2,549 patients were included. After PSM, 1,016 patients in each group were matched. The univariate analyses revealed that helmet wearing was associated with lesser severity (P < 0.001) and shorter hospitalization (P < 0.001). The regression analysis revealed that mortality was also lower in a helmet-wearing group (odds ratio: 0.34, 95% confidence interval: 0.21–0.56). In conclusion, wearing a helmet may reduce the mortality from a CCT after a motorcycle accident and associated with lesser severity and shorter hospitalization. © 2020 Choi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.