More Neurosurgeons Could Lead To More Lives Saved From Car Accidents: Study A new study reveals a factor that could have a real effect on the number of lives saved from car accidents: Neurosurgeons. The research, published in the Journal of Neurosurgery, shows that having more neurosurgeons around the country could decrease the number of lives lost in car crashes. Specifically, every one additional neurosurgeon in either a rural or urban county is linked with one fewer car accident-related death out of a population of a million, after accounting for other factors like socioeconomics, the number of general practitioner doctors and whether the county is considered urban or not. The researchers calculated that you would need six general surgeons to get the same effect, or 33 primary care doctors.
The study included car accident data from 3,141 counties around the country (2,051 were rural counties) from 2004 to 2006, as well as data on the number of neurosurgeons per million people in 2006. The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center researchers found that there was an average of 226 deaths from car accidents for every million people, while there was an average of six neurosurgeons per county.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the No. 1 cause of death for people between ages 5 and 34 are car accidents. The researchers noted that traumatic brain injury is the main reason for why people die in car accidents; and those are also the kinds of injuries that neurosurgeons are skilled in treating, according to a statement. In 2009, there were 30,797 total fatal car crashes, with 33,808 actual deaths from the crashes, according to the U.S. Census. The numbers are down from 1990, when there were 39,836 total fatal car crashes and 44,599 fatalities. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/27/neurosurgeons-car-accidents-lives-saved-motor-vehicle_n _1703109.html