INCIDENCE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF FALL-RELATED EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT VISITS

Objective: Unintentional falls are the leading cause of injury and the second most common cause of unintentional injury deaths in the United States, and place a great burden on EDs. In this study, the objective was to describe the incidence and characteristics of ED visits associ ated with unintentional falls in the United States. Methods: The autho rs performed a secondary analysis on data from the National Center for Health Statistics' National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey f or 1992-1994. An ED visit was defined as fall-related if an ICD-9-CM c ause of injury code was reported as E880.0-886.9 or E888. Results: The re were an estimated 7,946,000 fall-related ED visits per year, corres ponding to an annual rate of 3.1 per 100 persons (95% CI = 2.8 to 3.4) . Children under 5 years of age comprised the largest proportion of vi sits (14%). Among those visits coded with respect to place of occurren ce, the rate of visits associated with falls occurring at home (1.7/10 0; 95% CI = 1.6 to 1.9) was significantly higher than that; associated with falls occurring in all other locations combined (1.1/100; 95% CI = 1.0 to 1.2). The mean injury severity score increased significantly with the age of the patient. Fall-related ED visits resulted in an es timated 860,000 hospitalizations, 62% of which involved individuals ag ed 65 years and older. An estimated $2.45 billion per year was paid fo r fall-related ED visits. Government sources paid all or part of 41% o f visits. Conclusions: This study reports nationally representative da ta describing the incidence and characteristics of fall-related ED vis its. These data expand what is known about the epidemiology of falls a nd help to define the burden that fall injuries place on EDs in the Un ited States. The results of this study could serve as a benchmark to e valuate the effectiveness of future fall prevention efforts.