Hospitalizations for Injury and Poisoning in the United States: 1991

Advance Data 252.  Using information from the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS), this report describes the characteristics of patients hospitalized due to an injury or poisoning. Data are collected from short-stay, non-Federal inpatient records; and persons treated in hospital emergency rooms, outpatient departments, or ambulatory care clinics who are not admitted as inpatients are not included in this report. Discharges with a first-listed injury or poisoning diagnosis are the focus of this report (ICD 9 CM codes 800-999).

Data Highlights:

The overall hospitalization rate for injury and poisoning diagnoses was 110.5 per 10,000 population, but it ranged from 51.9 per 10,000 for children under 15 to 279.6 per 10,000 for persons 65 years of age or older.

The two most common injury and poisoning diagnoses were fractures (37 percent) and miscellaneous complications of surgical and medical care (21 percent). Over one-half of the miscellaneous complications involved an internal prosthetic device, implant, or graft, or were postoperative infections.

More than one-half of the persons 65 years of age and over with injury and poisoning diagnoses had fractures with most of these being hip fractures.

The average length of stay for injury and poisoning patients ranged from 3.2 days for poisoning patients to 12.3 days for burn patients.

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007