A retrospective population-based study of injury types among elderly in Taiwan

Abstract

The aim of the article was to investigate the injury types and medical utilisations among patients more than 65 years in Taiwan. The data used in this study were obtained from the years 1997 to 2008 of the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD). The patients with the age of 65 years and older as well as with ICM-9-CM discharge injury principal diagnoses 800-959 were included in this study. SPSS 18.0 was used for data analysis. The results showed that there were 518,601 older adults hospitalised because of injuries in the period of study. The average age among them was 76.1 years old and 51.7% of them were females. The common causes of injury were falls and motor vehicle accident. The average number of operations that patients received was one, and the average length of stay was 9.1 days. The total medical expenditure was over NT$ 28.9 billion, and the average expenditure was NT$ 55,738. The factors associated with deaths were sex, ages, co-morbidity disease, level of care, number of operations, length of stay, expenditure of medical care, injury types and causes of injury. This study concludes that in order to decrease the incident of injuries in elder patients, the education of preventing falls and traffic safety should be promoted continuously among elders.

Keywords:

• elderly
• injury
• fractures
• falls
• National Health Insurance Research Database

Authors’ contributions

Chiu-Hsuan Chou contributed to the interpretation of the data and drafted the paper. Chi-Hsiang Chung contributed to the interpretation of the data. Wu-Chien Chien and Ching-Huang Lai contributed to the study design, obtained the data, commented on the interpretation and revised the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.