Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #121787

Hope Tiesman, MSPH¹, Corinne Peek-Asa, PhD², Craig Zwerling, MD, PhD, MPH², Nancy Sprince, MD, MPH³, and Paul J. Amoroso, MD, MPH⁴. (1) Department of Epidemiology, University of Iowa, 100 Oakdale Campus, Iowa City, IA 52242, 319-621-2983, hope-tiesman@uiowa.edu, (2) Injury Prevention Research Center, University of Iowa, 100 Oakdale Campus, #124 IREH, Iowa City, IA 52242, (3) Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, University of Iowa, 138 IREH, 100 Oakdale Campus, Iowa City, IA 52242, (4) U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, 42 Kansas Street, Natick, MA 01760

Purpose: Injuries that occur early in a soldier's career are common and expensive, yet little is known about their long-term effects. We analyzed a cohort of active-duty army personnel who had an acute, traumatic, hospitalized injury in their first year of service and followed them to subsequent hospitalizations.

Methods: A 10-year retrospective cohort (1992-2002) was developed from a large relational military database that collects information on hospitalizations. The cohort included 5,678 persons who experienced an injury within the first 12 months of their military career. This cohort was followed forward in time to examine how the initial injury affected subsequent injury and non-injury hospitalizations.

Results: Those with early-career injuries were largely white (71%), enlisted (95%), males (86%), with a mean age of 21. Approximately half of the injuries occurred in the first 6 months of service. The leading cause of hospitalized injury was off-duty motor vehicle crash (14%), followed by sports and athletics (12%). Fractures of the lower limbs were the most common (18%), followed by intracranial injuries (11%). Preliminary results indicate that 1,837 persons had at least one subsequent hospitalization (32%) and the mean time between the early-career injury hospitalization and the subsequent one was 12 months (sd=17.4). While the leading reason for subsequent hospitalization was another injury (25%), mental disorders (13%) and musculoskeletal conditions (13%) were also prominent.

Conclusions: Further understanding of the full-course that early career injuries take in the military could greatly impact their injury and disability rates, as well the amount of time away from active service.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify causes of early-career injuries in the US Army
• Identify causes of subsequent hospitalizations in an acutely injured US Army cohort
• Discuss ideas for further research and new interventions to prevent these early injuries, as well as the subsequent hospitalizations

Keywords: Occupational Injury and Death, Injury Control

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.