Objectives: The purpose of this study was to estimate the incidence of injuries and to identify their causes by classifying injuries according to various categories including age, sex, mechanism of injury, body parts injured, and place of injury.
Methods: This study used data from the Korea National Hospital Discharge In-depth Injury Survey (KNHDIS) from 2004 to 2016. The KNHDIS is conducted annually by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and its survey population includes all hospitalized patients discharged from medical institutions that have 100 or more beds, such as hospitals, general hospitals, and secondary community health centers. The number of injured cases is weighted and estimated using the mid-year estimated population of each year.
Results: The injury discharge rate steadily increased since 2004 (1,505 per 100,000 population in 2004, 2,007 per 100,000 population in 2016) and most injuries were unintentional (annual average of 94.7%). On average, during the 13-year study period, the injury rate for males was 1.5 times as high as for females. The 2 main causes of injury were consistently traffic accidents and falls. Notably, the rate of injuries resulting from falls rose by 1.7-fold from 463 to 792 per 100,000 people, and exceeded the rate of traffic accidents in 2016.
Conclusions: The incidence of injuries steadily increased after the survey was first conducted, whereas mortality resulting from injuries mostly remained unchanged. This suggests that effective strategies and interventions should be reinforced to reduce unintentional injuries.
Keywords: Discharge; Hospitalization; Injury; Korea; Surveillance.