Injuries to the knee-thigh-hip complex are a frequent, debilitating, and expensive consequence of automobile crashes. Although lower extremity injuries are usually not life threatening, the physical and psychosocial consequences of these injuries are often long lasting. Increasing attention has been paid to these disabling injuries in recent years for a number of reasons. With significant advances throughout the past decade in frontal crash protection for the head, neck, chest, and abdomen resulting from increasing prevalence of air bags as well as greater use of safety belts, the relative proportion of injuries to these regions has declined. This is a true vehicle safety success story: vehicle occupants who might have died from these more severe injuries years ago are now often saved. However, the occupants who survive crashes that would have previously been fatal often have severe lower extremity injuries. Concurrently, the overall societal cost of lower extremity injuries has been increasing. (Author/publisher)
Abstract