Objective: To understand the pattern of children injuries treated in hospitals and to provide evidence for its further prevention and control.
Methods: Data of children cases was descriptively analyzed from the Chinese National Injury Surveillance System (NISS), from 2006 to 2008.
Results: The incidence rates of boys were twice (2.22, 2.15, 2.15) higher than girls. About one half (50.74%, 49.75%, 49.75%) of them were 5-14 year of age. The main causes were falls (44.14%, 45.68%, 47.15%), RTIs (15.71%, 14.46%, 13.79%), and blunt force injuries (13.20%, 12.92%, 12.40%). Main locations where the injuries happened were at home (34.96%, 36.86%, 38.84%), school and public places (24.72%, 19.80%, 21.19%), and road/street (21.21%, 19.63%, 19.33%). The major injured body parts were head (34.88%, 35.84%, 37.07%), upper limbs (28.00%, 28.21%, 27.81%) and lower limbs (21.86%, 21.49%, 21.31%). The majority cases were unintentional (93.01%, 92.66%, 90.58%), minor (78.50%, 81.20%, 81.52%) injuries, treated and discharged (82.37%, 85.19%, 84.84%). There were considerable differences in the distributions of causes, locations, injured body parts, and other contexts depending on age.
Conclusion: The pattern of children's injury would include causes, places and other characteristics treated at hospitals from NISS and was related to the age of the injured child which was quite different from the spectrum of death caused by injury. NISS acts as an important source of information on children's injury in China, and can contribute to the prevention and control program on children's injury.