Electric scooter vs. motorcycle injuries – little toys with an underestimated impact

Introduction: The study weighs the impact of accidents involving electric scooters and motorcycles, its main purpose being that of showing the injuries produced by the use of electric scooters.

Materials and method: The retrospective study was conducted in the Emergency Unit of the University Emergency Hospital Bucharest, Romania, between 01.06.2020 and 30.09.2020, by analyzing the data from the presentation sheets and the hospital database. It followed and compared a total of 55 cases, out of which 29 patients were involved in motorcycle accidents, and 26 patients were involved in electric scooter accidents, by number, age, sex, imaging investigations, severity of injuries, hospitalization days, and the treatment of discharged patients.

General data about the number of analyzed presentations was extracted and compared to similar data from the same period of the year 2019.

Results: The study showed an increase in presentations due to electric scooter accidents. Also, most of the injuries in both types of accidents are musculoskeletal (96.5% in motorcycle accidents and 84.61% in electric scooter accidents), and the percentage of discharged patients who needed immobilization by various orthopedic devices was higher in electric scooter accidents (34.8%) than in motorcycle accidents (26%).

Discussions: The study was conducted in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, in an atypical situation, due to regulations imposed by the authorities.

Conclusion: There was an increase in the use of electric scooters in the summer of 2020, which resulted in an increased number of mainly orthopedic injuries, and implicitly of immobilization for discharged patients, underestimated by the population, as protective equipment is not mandatory for people aged over 16 years.