Home Accidents in Shiraz during a 3-year Period (2000-2002)

Introduction: To the best of authors’ knowledge, to date, no systematic study has been carried out in Shiraz to assess the extent, frequency, causes and major outcome(s) of home accidents in rural and urban areas of this city. Additionally, no comparative study has been undertaken to evaluate the trend of these accidents over a period of time, and finally, the morbidity and mortality rates of these accidents are unknown. The current study was, therefore, undertaken to address some of these issues.

Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive analytical retrospective study in which data on home accidents for a period of 3 years (2000-2002) were collected from Health houses, Health centers and hospitals involved in the Home Accident Prevention Plan. They were then classified, based on the nature of injury, and were assigned to one of the following  categories; burns, poisonings, sharp object injuries, falls on the level and from height, etc and analyzed by appropriate statistical tests. Gender, age, seasonal distribution and outcome of injuries were considered in data analysis. 

Results: A total of 15402 accidents (4027, 5141, and 6234 cases for the years, 1999-2000, 2000-2001 and 2001-2002, respectively) had been registered during the study period.  Accidents, in general, were more common (52.1%) in women (57.5%, 53% and 48% for the 3 consecutive years of the study period, respectively), than in men (47.9%). 66.3% of accidents occurred in urban and 33.7% of them in rural areas. Burns (66.5%), followed by injuries due to sharp objects (11.3%) were responsible for over 77.8% of all accidents.Of the total injured patients, 80.5% were treated completely, 18.1% were reported to be under treatment, 0.1% of injuries resulted in disability and 1.3% of victims died.  .  Accidents were more prevalent in children under 5 years of age (25.3%), followed by 5-9 years of age (10.4%) and 15-19 years of age (10.1%).   Seasonal distribution of the accidents revealed that they were more common in winter (29.6%).  Similarly, most burns (33.2%) occurred during the winter months while the majority of poisonings (34%) occurred in summer. 

Conclusion: The observation that burns form the most common cause of home accidents indicates area where preventative interventions might be usefully targeted.