While E-codes are valuable in the surveillance of many common and serious injury categories, they are lacking in specificity for the many types of sports/recreation injury (SRI) that occur in the physically active population. The purpose of this research is to examine 40 months of data collected through emergency departments (ED) that code for specific sport/recreation injuries. Data from five acute care hospitals have SRI specific codes entered into a computer data base by medical records nosologists. SRI was described using means and percentages. The odds of admission to hospital for a specific ED encounter were calculated using logistic regression. There were a total of 42,443 injuries coded during the study period. The mean age of those suffering SRI was 19.5(sd12.9) for females and 21.3(sd12.2) for males. The male to female ratio was 2.3. The sport with the most ED encounters was ice hockey (n=6843) followed by cycling (n=4536), soccer (n=4223). The overall hospitalisation rate was 4.5%(n=1926) with males having a greater likelihood of admission (OR=1.2;95%CI=1.09,1.34). After age 29 there was a linear increase in the likelihood that a person would be admitted: age 30-39 (OR=1.5;95%CI=1.2,2.1), age 40-49 (OR=1.9;95%CI=1.4,2.6), age 50 plus (OR=3.8;95%CI=2.8,5.3). The sports with the greatest likelihood of admission when compared to the reference sport ice hockey were: all terrain motor cycles (OR=8.7;95%CI=6.8,11.0), snowmobiling (OR=7.8;95%CI=5.8,10.5), and trampolining (OR=4.6;95%CI=3.5,6.0). The coding of SRI in the ED is an important step in the surveillance of a large injury category with disparate causes and circumstances.
Learning Objectives: The learner at this session will be able to: 1. Describe the pattern of sports/recreation injury in a major Canadian urban centre. 2. Discuss systematic sports/recreation injury surveillance. 3. Identify sports/recreation activities that present to the emergency department with very severe injuries
Keywords: Injury, Surveillance
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.