Sentinel surveillance of injury in a district hospital in Shenzhen city, Guangdong province,2010

Objective To understand the epidemiological characteristics of injuries in emergency department in the hospital in Guangming new district and provide evidence for injury prevention and control. Methods Descriptive epidemiological analysis was conducted on the surveillance data of injury in the hospital in 2010. Results A total of 22 784 injury cases were reported in 2010. The injuries were mainly caused by blunt force (40.24%), falling down (16.46%), animal bite (13.28%), knife/sharp instrument wound (11.43%) and motor vehicle accident (10.51%). The injuries mainly occurred in industrial/construction sites (40.80%) and on street/road(22.65%). Most cases were unintentional injuries (83.97%) and mild in severity (76.30%). The majority of serious injuries were caused by motor vehicle accident (55.26%). Most injuries occurred during 08:00-22:00 in a day (85.51%). No obvious peak was found in overall time distribution of injury cases, but the differences on the time distribution in different populations were significant (2=998,P=0.00). The injuries in pre school aged children mainly occurred during 17:00-20:00 (37.43%), the injuries in students mainly occurred during 16:00-19:00 (36.91%) and self wounding/suicide mainly occurred during 00:00-01:00 (12.85%),20:00-21:00 (8.38%) and 21:00-22:00 (8.38%). Conclusion Targeted intervention should be focused on occupational injury, animal bite and traffic accident injury prevention and control in different population, places and times.