NORTHSTATE, Calif. — Doctors in the Northstate are seeing a rise in injuries related to e-bikes and e-scooters.
Mercy Medical Center Redding Chief of Neurosurgery Dr. Lars Widdel told the Northstate’s News one of the most common injuries they’re noticing from this are head injuries.
“Especially with some of these electric scooters…you can get speeds up to 20 miles per hour, at least on ones that are regulated,” Widdel said. “Some people do go and adjust those motors, and they can go up to speeds for 35, 40 miles an hour. So at those speeds, people often will fall, and that will result in injuries.”
Widdel said, in the last five years or so, his team has seen a significant, dramatic rise in patients coming to their emergency departments with various injuries, including to the head.
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“About roughly one in 10 patients who suffer a head injury end up in the intensive care unit and often will need interventions by myself where we have to open up their skull and drain blood out or things like that or have permanent brain damage,” Widdel said.
Widdel added, “The other thing that we really look at is, a high percentage of patients that end up injured is because, in addition to riding a bike, unhelmeted and so forth, they’re often under the influence of either alcohol or drugs. Roughly about three out of every four patients that come with injuries are usually under the influence of alcohol or drugs, which impairs their ability to respond adequately to inadvertent situations and thereby have higher risk of injuries.”
As of the morning of March 30, Dr. Widdel said they had two patients in the hospital who have head injuries as a result of not using a helmet while riding either a scooter, skateboard, or e-bike.
He recommends always wearing a helmet and wearing it correctly.
Widdel said, “If you are concerned that you may have struck your head, especially if you’ve had loss of consciousness, if you feel in any way dizzy, lightheaded, you’re not walking well, you’re weak on one side of [the] body, your speech is disorganized or garbled, you have vision problems, you should go to the emergency department and be seen as soon as possible because the earlier we can treat it, the better it goes.”
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