The Rhône-Alpes Observatory of Trauma (France): Frequency, nature and severity of the different types of accidents

Introduction Traumatisms constitute a major public health issue. Each year in Europe, they cause 240,000 deaths and are at the origin of disability in one million people. They represent the first cause of death among young people aged between 15 and 24. The unintentional injuries are the most frequent. They fall into three broad categories: road crashes, home and leisure injuries and work accidents. As these injuries are diversified and fall under different areas of decision and prevention, they are most of the time the subject of specific data collection. The Rhone-Alpes Observatory of trauma proposes to collect all types of injuries with the same methodology. The objective is to describe frequency, nature and relative severity of the different types of unintentional injuries occurring on a geographically defined area. Methods The Rhone-Alpes Observatory of trauma is a systematic data collection of all the victims consulting emergency rooms in public and private hospitals of the county of Ain following a road crash, home and leisure injury or work accident occurring in this county. The data collection took place over a period of 12 consecutive months on the 2013–2014 period. The coding of accidental characteristics is based on the classification specific to each type of accident. Injuries are coded according to the Abbeviated Injury Scale (AIS), an international trauma scale that assigns to each lesion a severity score (from 1 “minor” to 6 “beyond any therapeutic resource”). The analysis consists in providing descriptive statistics. Results A total of 32,492 victims of unintentional injuries were included in the analysis. The distribution of victims according to the type of accident showed that home and leisure injuries were the most frequent (80.7%). Next came work accidents (14.3%) and road crashes (6.8%). Some home and leisure injuries were also road crashes (0.4%) and some road crashes were also accidents at work (1.4%). The victims of work or road accidents were more often men and young people than those of home and leisure injuries. Victims of road crashes had the highest proportion of serious injuries (AIS ≥ 3). Conclusions Given the similar conditions in data collection, The Rhone-Alpes Observatory of trauma makes it possible to compare the incidences of different types of accidents. It also makes it possible to measure the frequency of accidents related to mobility, by widening the conventional perimeter of road accidents to pedestrians who fall alone on the road.