An analysis of 6215 hospitalized unintentional injuries among children aged 0–14 in northwest China

The aim of this study was to analyze the sorts and the external causes of hospitalized unintentional injuries among children aged 0-14 so as to learn the status of children's unintentional injuries in northwest China and then to give some references for the prevention. As many as 6215 abstracts of the discharged medical records of hospitalized children for unintentional injuries from 31 hospitals in northwest China from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2003 were analyzed, especially for the different external causes and sorts of injuries according to ages, genders and locations. We identified 2081 (33.5%) fractures, 1279 (20.6%) scald/burns, 1125 (18.1%) internal organ injuries and 611 (9.8%) open injuries among the 6215 hospitalized children for unintentional injuries. Boy's cases were 2.2 times as many as those of girl's. The age characteristics of each injury was as follows: scald/burns occurred mostly in children under 3 (53.8%), especially in children under 1 year (58.5%); fractures occurred mostly in children above 4 (38.2%), especially in children aged 7-14 years (41.0%). The proportion of traffic accidents and falls were the highest among children aged 7-14, with 28.5% for traffic accidents and 34.4% for falls, respectively. The total cost of hospitalization was US $1033876.0, with a mean cost of US $166.3 per case. The total length of stay in hospital was 106915.2 days, with a mean of 17.2 days per case. A large proportion of fall, traffic accident, and fire/explosion induced fractures, scald/burns, internal organ and encephalic injuries characterize the childhood unintentional injuries in northwest China. From the analyses of external causes, prevention strategies for different external causes should be correspondingly specific.