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A report on the causes of injury leading to hospitalisation and death over the last decade has been released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
In the latest update of its report, falls continue to be the main injury that people are admitted to hospital for and the leading cause of injury related death.
Young children are more likely to present at hospital with accidental poisoning than older age groups, and adults aged 40 years and under have the highest hospitalisation rate for injuries from assaults.
Transport-related injuries, assault and accidental poisoning are among the leading causes of injuries.
Falls
Falls accounted for 2 in 5 injuries, hospitalisations and deaths from 2021 to 2023. The rates have been increasing due to the ageing population.
Slips, trips and stumbles were the most common causes of falls.
Transport
While falls accounted for 238 055 hospitalisations in 2022–2023, transport-related injury hospitalisations accounted for 61 200 presentations.
Cars were the most common type of vehicle involved in these injuries, with more than 20 000 injuries and more than 720 fatalities.
Despite the news being peppered with reports on fatal car accidents, the AIHW reports that the actual injury rate due to transport incidents has been decreasing over the past decade.
Assault
During the reporting period, there were 20 490 people hospitalised due to assault and 218 were killed (homicides).
People aged 25–44 years were most likely to be assaulted (compared to other age groups) and the perpetrators were most likely to be men across all types of assault.
In two-thirds of assault hospitalisations where the offender was specified, perpetrators were a spouse or a domestic partner. One-third of assault victims didn’t specify who the offender was.
Accidental poisoning
Children aged 0–4 years had the highest rate of hospitalisation after being accidentally poisoned, compared to other age groups.
Overall poisoning resulted in 8921 injury hospitalisations in 2022–2023 and 1567 injury deaths in 2021–2022.
AIHW reported that common substances associated with these deaths and hospitalisations included anti-epileptics, sedatives, psychotropics, narcotics, opioids and hallucinogens.
Alcohol was responsible for the highest number of non-pharmaceutical accidental poisoning deaths.
Children aged 4 years and under accounted for about 80 hospitalisations and 11 deaths per 100 000 across the population.
Over the past decade, the number of poisonings severe enough to need ventilatory support has doubled.
Injury burden and spending
The AIHW Australian Burden of Disease Study 2023 states that injuries in Australia are the sixth highest cause of disease burden (8%). The report states that 82% of this burden is due to premature death or years of life lost. The remaining 18% was due to years spent in ill health or disability.
Most of the injury burden happened to males (72%).
In terms of cost, in 2020–2021 a total of $150.1 billion of health system spending was allocated to health conditions. Of that total, $10.9 billion (7.3%) was spent on treating and managing injuries.
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