Time to add a new priority target for child injury prevention? The case for an excess burden associated with sport and exercise injury: population-based study

摘要

Objective To determine the population-level burden of sports injuries compared with that for road traffic injury for children aged 15?years in Victoria, Australia. Design Retrospective observational study. Setting Analysis of routinely collected data relating to non-fatal hospital-treated sports injury and road traffic injury cases for children aged 15?years in Victoria, Australia, over 2004–2010, inclusive. Participants 75?413 non-fatal hospital-treated sports injury and road traffic injury cases in children aged 15?years. Data included: all Victorian public and private hospital hospitalisations, using the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health Related Problems, 10th Revision, Australian Modification (ICD-10-AM) activity codes to identify sports-related cases and ICD-10-AM cause and location codes to identify road traffic injuries; and injury presentations to 38 Victorian public hospital emergency departments, using a combination of activity, cause and location codes. Main outcome measures Trends in injury frequency and rate were analysed by log-linear Poisson regression and the population-level injury burden was assessed in terms of years lived with disability (YLD), hospital bed-days and direct hospital costs. Results Over the 7-year period, the annual frequency of non-fatal hospital-treated sports injury increased significantly by 29% (from N=7405 to N=9923; p0.001) but the frequency of non-fatal hospital-treated road traffic injury decreased by 26% (from N=1841 to N=1334; p0.001). Sports injury accounted for a larger population health burden than did road traffic injury on all measures: 3-fold the number of YLDs (7324.8 vs 2453.9); 1.9-fold the number of bed-days (26?233 vs 13?886) and 2.6-fold the direct hospital costs ($A5.9 millions vs $A2.2 millions). Conclusions The significant 7-year increase in the frequency of hospital-treated sports injury and the substantially higher injury population-health burden (direct hospital costs, bed-day usage and YLD impacts) for sports injury compared with road traffic injury for children aged 15?years indicates an urgent need to prioritise sports injury prevention in this age group.