Tuesday, June 1, 2004

SPOTLIGHT: Personal injuries

Teen boys most prone

Teenage boys are more prone to serious injury than any other group in Canada, according to a new report.

In 2000/01, 27% of boys aged 12 to 19 had had a serious injury. That is, they sustained an injury severe enough to limit their usual activities – a broken bone, a sprain, a bad cut or burn, or a poisoning, for example.

This rate among teen boys was over four times as high as men aged 65 to 79, and over three times as high as men 80 and older.

It was also twice the national rate of 13% for all individuals aged 12 and over. In total, an estimated 3.4 million Canadians were seriously injured in 2000/01.

Overall, men were at higher risk than women. About 15% of men reported sustaining at least one activity-limiting injury in the year prior to the survey, compared with 11% of women.

Falls leading cause

Falls were the leading cause of serious injury, accounting for 34% of injuries among men and 43% among women.

The risk of an injury related to falls was highest, again, among boys aged 12 to 19.

Sprains and strains comprised the leading type of injury for both sexes, followed by fractures. Men were most likely to injure either their wrist or hand; women, their ankle or foot.

Men were most often engaged in sports-related activities when they were injured. However, while 28% of injuries among men occurred at an athletic facility, an almost identical proportion (26%) occurred at home.

Most women hurt at home

Four out of every 10 women, on the other hand, were injured at home. The rate of sports-related injury for men was more than double that for women.

The risk of injury varied with the season. Summer presented the highest risk of injury for both men and women aged 12 to 64, but seasonal variations were much more pronounced among men.

However, among seniors, the injury rate for women fluctuated more over the year than did the rate for men.

Older women were most often injured during the winter months, while for older men, no significant seasonal differences emerged.

Although most injuries are not fatal, just over 13,000 Canadians died from injury- and poisoning-related causes in 2000. This represented 6% of all deaths that year.

You can read the full report “Injuries” in the new "Health Matters" section of Health Reports on line.

For more information, contact Kathryn Wilkins (613-951-1769), Health Statistics Division.

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© 2004, Statistics Canada.