Does obesity affect the position of seat belt loading in occupants involved in real-world motor vehicle collisions?

Previous work has shown that the lap belt moves superior and forward compared to the bony pelvis as body mass index (BMI) increases. The goal of this project was to determine whether the location of lap belt loading is related to BMI for occupants who sustained real-world motor vehicle collisions (MVCs).

A national MVC database was queried for vehicle occupants over a 10-year period (2003-2012) who were at least 16 years old, restrained by a 3-point seat belt, sitting in the front row, and involved in a front-end collision with a change in velocity of at least 56 km/h. Cases were excluded if there was not an available computed tomography (CT) scan of the abdomen. CT scans were then analyzed using adipose enhancement of 3-dimensional reconstructions. Scans were assessed for the presence a radiographic seat belt sign (rSBS), or subcutaneous fat stranding due to seat belt loading. In scans in which the rSBS was present, anterior and superior displacement of rSBS from the anterior-superior iliac spine (ASIS) was measured bilaterally. This displacement was correlated with BMI and injury severity.

The inclusion and exclusion criteria yielded 151 cases for analysis. An rSBS could definitively be identified in 55 cases. Cases in which occupants were older and had higher BMI were more likely to display an rSBS. There was a correlation between increasing BMI and anterior rSBS displacement (P <.01 and P <.01, right and left, respectively). There was no significant correlation between BMI and superior displacement of the rSBS (P =.46 and P =.33, right and left, respectively). When the data were examined in terms of relating increasing superior displacement of the lap belt with Injury Severity Scale (P =.34) and maximum Abbreviated Injury Score (AIS) injury severity (P =.63), there was also no significant correlation.

The results from this study demonstrated that anterior displacement of the radiographic seat belt sign but not superior displacement increased with higher BMI. These results suggest that obesity may worsen horizontal position but not the vertical position of the lap belt loading during real-world frontal MVCs.