Injury Characteristics and Predisposing Effects of Various Outdoor Traumatic Situations in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

Backgroud: Many studies have reported injury characteristics of individual traumatic situations. However, a comparative analysis of specific risks is meaningful to better understand injury characteristics and help establish injury-prevention measures. This study was conducted to investigate and compare injury characteristics in children and adolescents by various outdoor traumatic situations.

Methods: Outdoor traumatic situations were determined and classified into physical activity-related injury (n = 3,983) and pedestrian (n = 784) and passenger (n = 1,757) injuries in traffic accidents. Home injury (n = 16,121) was used as the control group. Then, the characteristics of each outdoor trauma were compared with 1:1 matched indoor trauma (among home injuries); each outdoor traumatic situation's predisposing risk for the injured body part, injury type, and injury severity were analyzed; and changes by age of frequency ranking among physical activity-related injuries were investigated.

Results: Outdoor trauma showed higher risks for limb injuries (injured body part), fracture and muscle/tendon injuries (injury type), and severe injuries (severity) than indoor trauma. Various outdoor traumatic situations presented different predisposing effects on injury characteristics. Among physical activity-related injuries, bicycle injury was commonest across all ages, and playing activities were common causes for injury for individuals of age < 9 years, whereas sports activities overwhelmed the common causes thereafter.

Conclusions: The findings would help to better understand the specific injury risk of various outdoor traumatic situations and may potentially facilitate the establishment of more effective injury-prevention measures.

Keywords: Adolescent; Children; Physical activity; Traffic accident; Trauma.

Fig. 1. Forest plot displaying predisposing effects for injured body parts on multi-variate analysis. The X-axis represents the odds ratios (ORs; diamond) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs; horizontal line). Details on OR, 95% CI, and p-values are provided in the Supplementary Tables 1, 2, 3, 4. ref: reference, NA: not available, TA: traffic accident.^*Korean martial art.

Fig. 2. Forest plot displaying predisposing effects for injury type on multivariate analysis. The X-axis represents the odds ratios (ORs; diamond) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs; horizontal line). Details on OR, 95% CI, and p-values are provided in the Supplementary Tables 5, 6, 7, 8. ref: reference, NA: not available, TA: traffic accident. ^*Korean martial art.

Fig. 3. Forest plot displaying predisposing effects for injury severity on multivariate analysis. The X-axis represents the odds ratios (ORs; diamond) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs; horizontal line). Details on OR, CI, and p-values are provided in the Supplementary Table 9. ref: reference, NA: not available, TA: traffic accident. ^*Korean martial art.