A descriptive study of the admitted patients for injuries in a large teaching hospital in 2016

Injuries are the causes of irreparable damages and costs in urban and rural settings. Preventive procedures are effective if correct related information is gathered and provided. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the injury patterns and related factors in a large teaching hospital.

The current cross-sectional study was conducted at Edalatian Emergency Center, Mashhad, Iran, in 2016. All study subjects were extracted from the Hospital Information System (HIS).The demographic characteristics and injuries-related factors of 6,350 patients were extracted from the HIS. The extracted variables were emergency severity index (ESI), type of referral, referral reason, insurance organizations, age, anatomic site of injuries, and month of referral. The data were analyzed in SPSS software (version 21) using the descriptive statistics method (frequency and percentage).

The majority of the study population was composed of males (%76.4). In total, 98.3% of the patients were classified into the semi-urgent and non-urgent levels, and 75.6% of the cases were affected in the right upper extremity. The most common age group was between 10-20 (69.4%) years, and the majority of the cases were admitted in June, July, and August.

The current study determined the pattern and most important reasons for injuries' referral to an emergency department. Accordingly, the injuries were more frequent in the young people and active human force in our community. Furthermore, there was a significant difference among the frequencies of injury incidence in the summer holidays. It seems necessary to develop preventive procedures for injuries.