Article Text
Abstract
Background Recent Global Burden of Disease estimates highlight the high burden associated with injury, especially road trauma. However, these estimates, based on the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9/ICD-10), did not specifically identify sports injuries.
Objective To compare the public health burden of sport and road traffic injury, for children <15 years over a 7-year period in Victoria, Australia.
Design Analysis of data for non-fatal hospital-treated sports injuries and road traffic injury cases for children aged <15 years in Victoria, Australia over 2004–2010, inclusive. Data included: all Victorian public and private hospitalizations, using ICD-10-Australian modification (ICD-10-AM) activity codes to identify sport-related cases and ICD-10-AM cause and location codes to identify road traffic injuries; injury presentations to 38 Victorian public hospital emergency departments, using a combination of the available activity, cause and location codes.
Main outcome Mmeasurements Trends in injury frequency were analysed by log-linear Poisson regression. Population-level injury burden was assessed in terms of years lived with disability (YLDs), hospital bed-days and direct hospital costs.
Results Over the 7-year period, the annual frequency of hospital-treated sports injury increased significantly by 29% (N=7405 to N=9923; P<.001) but the frequency of hospital-treated road traffic injury decreased by 26% (N=1841 to N=1334; P<.001). Sports injury accounted for a larger population health burden than did road traffic injury: 3.0X the number of YLDs (7324.8 vs. 2453.9); 1.9X the number of bed-days (26,233 vs. 13,886); and 2.6X the direct hospital costs ($5·9 m vs. $2.2 m).
Conclusions The significant 7-year increase in frequency of hospital-treated sports injury and significantly higher injury population-health burden for sports injury, compared with road traffic injury, for children aged <15 years provides additional incentive for prioritising sports injury prevention in this age group.