PHYSICAL THERAPY ASSESSMENT AND INTERVENTION IN MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENTS IN PRIMARY CARE: A NARRATIVE REVIEW

Background

Traffic accidents are an important problem for public health, due to their great impact on morbidity and mortality, with a predominance of motorcycle accidents. Brazil is ranked 5th among the countries with the highest number of traffic deaths and is also the second leading cause of death among all deaths from external causes. Motorcyclists are 14 times more susceptible to death. In view of the vulnerability of risk factors, it is important to consider the types of injuries and body areas most frequently affected due to motorcycle accidents, observing the magnitude of the trauma, such as traumatic brain injury (TBI) and spinal cord injury (TRM); fractures in the upper and lower limbs; various injuries, dislocations, sprains and abrasions, contusions, sprains/dislocations, and cuts/lacerations. The evaluation and treatment of the grievance directed to Primary Health Care in the rehabilitation of the patient with musculoskeletal and neurological impairment resulting from these accidents, lacks a physiotherapeutic evaluation with instruments that can contribute to the process of assessment and physiotherapeutic intervention. In the evaluation, anamnesis, physical examination, using measurement instruments for pain assessment, evaluation of attitudes and behavior and driving style, and the type and severity of injuries and possibility of survival of motorcyclists involved in traffic accidents are performed.

Objectives

The objective of this study was to conduct a Narrative Review on traffic accidents and to investigate the type of physical therapy evaluation with its respective intervention in Primary Care.

Methods

To this end, a literature review was conducted in the Scielo, Lilacs, and PUBMED databases, including combining terms and keywords using the Boolean operators OR and AND, with the following descriptors: Traffic Accidents, Physical Therapy, Primary Care.

Results

The results found showed a certain vulnerability in the rehabilitation of patients with musculoskeletal and neurological impairment resulting from these accidents, lacking an accurate physiotherapeutic evaluation, with validated instruments that can contribute to the process of evaluation and physiotherapeutic intervention.

Conclusion

The physiotherapist has been dedicating his attention, almost exclusively, to the prevention, cure, and rehabilitation of polytraumatized and/or sequelae patients, whose mission is to develop actions aimed at health maintenance or, in the last case, to the prevention of sequelae, and not only to rehabilitation, and in the scope of injury prevention and health promotion.

Implications

This study allows us to present suggestions for possible future research paths. Some of these suggestions are related to new studies on changes in conceptions, highlighting the importance of conducting Health Education actions for the population through lectures, making these motorcyclists aware of the dangerous relationship to risk factors and traffic accidents, performing group attendance for experience reports regarding the experience lived during the period of the accident, besides offering to these public pamphlets, booklets with orientations alerting about the conditioning factors of accident prevention and health education, offering subsidies for the adoption of new habits in education and health.