Introduction: Accidents at work happen quite frequently in Romania, due to non-compliance with the protection rules and inattention, thus leading to unfortunate events and subsequent complications. Trauma-related accidents at work are a common cause of injuries having the most serious consequence partial or total limb amputation.

Aim: This study was conducted to investigate the incidence of work-related accidents according to their causes, the location and severity of the lesion, potential prognostic factors and the environment in which they mostly occur.

Materials and methods. We conducted a retrospective observational study on a total of 131,941 patients presented at the Emergency Unit of Sibiu in 2017 and 2018, using our means and frequencies to characterize and describe the susceptible population of risk most liable to limb accidents due to unforeseen work accidents.

Results: From the total number of 479 victims, in 2018 the number of cases decreased by 1,47% compared to the previous year. The likelihood of accidents was higher for males (85,17%) rather than females, coming mostly from an urban environment (56,78%) than from a rural one. The ages most affected by this type of accidents are those over 40 years old (57,82%), with the highest incidence of cases between 41-50 years old (23,18%). Injuries have been shown to occur, especially at the level of the upper limb (76,40%) rather than the lower one (23,38%) predominantly on the left side (58,03%), leading in the most severe cases to total amputations (59,67%). 

Conclusions: The socio-demographic and occupational profile predominantly associated with work-related accidents include: male gender, age between 41 and 50 years coming from an urban environment, due to the predominance of the masculin gender in physical work with heavy equipment. The most common agents causing movement disturbance and injury at the upper limb level in these work situations were represented by the flex, the circular saw and the chainsaw, devices that are especially handled by men. The most frequent types of limb lesions were excoriations, contusions, open and closed fractures and amputations. From one year to another the number of work accidents decreased by an almost insignificant percentage, but one who helped Romania to position itself on the second rank at European level in case of work accidents, after 4 years ranking constantly on the first place.