Assault related injury visits in US emergency departments: An analysis by weekday, month and weekday-by-month

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the temporal variation (month and day) in assault-related injuries presenting to the US Emergency Departments (ED). An IRB exempt, retrospective review of prospectively collected data was performed using the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System Database from 2005 to 2017 for six categories of assault-related injuries-altercation, sexual assault, robbery, intimate partner violence (IPV), other specified assaults and unknown assault types. National estimates of injuries and associated variables were obtained using SUDAAN software, followed by cosinor analyses for the variation of month and weekday of injury. Three-dimensional topographic representations for weekday-by-month analyses were also created. Over this 13-year time span, there were more than 21 million injury visits due to assault, accounting for 6.57% of all ED visits. While there was no change in the incidence of total number of assaults over the study period, there was a significant increase in the annual percentage incidence of IPV (1.17%; p = .0094) and robbery (2.56%; p = .0001). Cosinor analyses demonstrated a mid-summer peak for all assault types except for robberies (late summer). All assault types showed a weekend peak (late Saturday or early Sunday). Topographical contours exhibited a peak in July and August on early Sunday for all assaults, however the month varied by the type of assault, with weekend peaks in the spring and winter for IPV. This information can be used in prospective resource planning for management and prevention strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Assault
• injury
• intimate partner violence
• altercation
• cosinor

Acknowledgements

ChronoLab3.0TM software, designed for MacintoshTM computers, cannot be purchased. This software, used to perform cosinor analyses, was provided through the courtesy of Dr. Artemio Mojón and colleagues, Bioengineering and Chronobiology Labs, ETSI Telecomunicación, University of Vigo, Campus Universitario, Vigo (Pontevedra) 36280, Spain. It can be downloaded from their website at http://www.tsc.uvigo.es/BIO/Bioing/References.html. Please kindly acknowledge their generosity when using this software.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Bharti Khurana MD, Funds to Sustain Research Excellence, Brigham Research Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital.