6 to 7 Hospitalized Patients Due to 'Injuries'... More Than Cancer

In 2021, it was found that 6 to 7 out of every 10 hospitalized patients were injury patients. Injury refers to health problems caused by external risk factors such as various accidents, disasters, and poisoning.

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The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency announced on the 3rd that it will release the '2021 Discharge Injury Statistics' and raw data, which are the results of a survey on the incidence of patients hospitalized due to injuries in 2021, starting from the 4th. According to this survey, the total number of hospitalized patients in South Korea in 2021 was 6,225,014, of which injury patients accounted for 956,185 (15.4%), ranking first. This is more than cancer (12.6%) and digestive system diseases (11.3%).

The main causes of injury were falls (47.2%), accounting for nearly half. This was followed by transport accidents (23.3%) and collisions (10.9%). Stab wounds and fire/flame/heat injuries were recorded at 3.5% and 3.1%, respectively. Based on a population of 100,000, transport accidents peaked in 2010 (772 people) and have decreased to 382 people in 2021, but falls have increased from 463 people in 2004, the first year of statistics, to 774 people in 2021.

Among all injury patients, men (52.8%) were more affected than women (47.2%). Injuries caused by falls were more common in women than men starting at age 55. For those aged 75 and older, women had 4,545 cases per 100,000 population, which is twice the number of men (2,399).

Among poisoning injury patients aged 15 to 24, intentional self-harm poisoning accounted for the majority (88.2%). Unintentional poisoning accounted for only 9.6%. In contrast, among the elderly aged 65 to 74, the rates of unintentional poisoning (50.6%) and intentional self-harm poisoning (48.7%) were similar.

By life cycle, intentional self-harm patients were most common among adolescents (ages 13 to 18) with 57 cases per 100,000 population. This was followed by 49 cases among those aged 65 and older, 35 cases among young and middle-aged adults (ages 19 to 64), and 1 case among children (ages 0 to 12). Compared to 10 years ago in 2011, adolescents (ages 13 to 18) increased (36 → 57 cases), while the elderly aged 65 and older decreased (75 → 49 cases).

The main locations where injuries occurred were roads and arterial roads (men 30.7%, women 24.1%) and residences (men 14.7%, women 29.5%). The next most common locations were industrial and construction sites for men (7.5%) and commercial facilities for women (2.5%).

The average length of hospital stay for injury patients was 13 days, which is longer than the overall average of 8 days. Also, considering that the average length of stay was 6 days for ages 0 to 14 and 17 days for those aged 75 and older, the length of stay increased with age. By cause of injury, fire/flame/heat injuries had an average stay of 16 days, falls 14 days, and transport accidents 12 days.

Ji Young-mi, director of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, emphasized, "To prevent and manage injuries, a surveillance system that can identify the scale and risk factors of injury occurrence must come first. We will continue to monitor injury status through in-depth discharge injury surveys and contribute to public safety by disseminating injury prevention guidelines to the public based on this data."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.