One-year Incidence of Home Accidents in a Rural Swedish Municipality

Abstract

Since 1978 a continuous registration of acute in-patient and out-patient visits, has been conducted in a municipality in Skaraborg County in western Sweden as a part of the evaluation of an intervention programme. Such a comprehensive community oriented intervention programme has never been reported before. A special focus has been directed at accident cases divided up by environment: home, work, traffic, and other. A total of 20440 inhabitants in the municipality were registered in health and medical care centres over a six-year period because of injuries. Since 23.5% of all accidents happen in the home, cases of home accidents have been mapped out in more detail with the help of standardized and structured surveys via thelephone interviews. All of these were completed with a review of hospital records and death certificates. Because of the comprehensive registration we were able for the first time in Sweden to calculate the distribution of home accidents down to very small geographical areas. The thinly populated areas show significantly higher levels of home accidents when compared to the densely populated areas. In addition to geographical differences, there were incidence differences regarding sex, age group, and type of housing. The majority of home accidents (76.5%) occurred in connection with moving, play, and hobbies. Injuries from blows, cuts, and collisions are the most common type of accidents for men, while injuries from falls are the most dominant types for women. The dominating types of injuries are: contusions, fractures, and wounds. A significantly higher incidence of accident cases among the elderly exists in all of the old age homes-/service houses in the study area. Mapping of home accidents on the local level is needed as a base-line for the intervention programme as well as the evaluation of its effects.