[«All of a sudden…» preventability and priorities of construction fatalities: an experience in Piedmont].

Objective: To examine the usefulness for prevention of the National Surveillance System on occupational fatalities, which is based on the narrative description of the work accident collected by OSH inspectors and on the subsequent classification of the injury dynamics by means of a standardized model of analysis.

Materials And Methods: The system ability of providing useful recommendations for prevention was evaluated on one hand by analyzing the effectiveness of inspections in preventing fatalities, on the other hand by identifying the most frequent accident mechanisms. Data analyzed consisted of investigation reports of construction fatalities occurred during 2002-2008 in the Piedmont Region, collected by surveillance system.