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Abstract
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Dear Editor,
This study focused on occupational-related injuries with the objective of describing the demography of victims, the nature of occupation, areas of the body injured, severity of injuries in accordance with the New Injury Severity Score (NISS), management in emergency department (ED), and outcome of their hospital stay. According to section 2 (8) of the Indian constitution, the term "Employment injury" means a personal injury to an employee caused by accident or an occupational disease arising out of and in the course of his employment, whether the accident occurs, or the occupational disease is contracted within or outside the territories of India.[1] It is one of the leading causes of disability and death among employees that may results in poor economic status of the workers and their families. In addition to its adverse effects on the employee, it deteriorates the work productivity and the profit of the organization and the community.[2],[3],[4] Although prevention methods are available, many injuries still occur due to poor ergonomics, manual handling of heavy loads, misuse of equipment, general hazards, and inadequate safety training.[3],[4],[5] The severity of these injuries may vary from simple soft laceration to complex fractures, requiring a multidisciplinary team for management, where the ED physician plays an important role.[3],[4],[5]
Our study conducted in the ED of Christian Medical College describes the spectrum of injuries among various occupational sectors, the severity of injury based on the NISS, and outcome during the study period of 24 months (January 2017 to December 2018). The charts were reviewed, and the relevant details of history, clinical examination, laboratory, and radiological investigations were documented in the study form. Outcome of the patients from the ED with regard to admission, discharge, leave against medical advice (LAMA), and death were documented. The data were then analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows software released 2015, version 23.0, Armonk, New York. Some of the variables such as sex of the patient, occupation of the patient, and mode of injury were categorized and coded. A bivariate analysis was done to identify the relationship between these variables and the potential determinants. All possible determinants with P ≤ 0.05 in the bivariate analysis were used as candidates for multivariate logistic regression analysis to determine their significant association.
A total of 1,43,621 patients presented to the ED during the study period, of which 13,604 (9.47%) were trauma patients. Among these trauma patients, 603 (4.4%) patients presented with occupation-related injuries...
Language: en |