[School injuries among 7 to 15 years old children]

This study had two purposes: first, to describe the incidence and characteristics of school injuries among 7 to 15 year old pupils in Norway; second, to identify effective preventive measures. Data on school injuries were taken from the Norwegian National Injury Register (National Institute of Public Health) for the 1995-97 period, n = 2,975. The incidence of school injuries was 29 per 1,000 children-years. Over the nine-year age span, boys had a higher cumulative incidence (292 injuries per 1,000 boys) than girls (239 injuries per 1,000 girls); 1% of the injuries was categorized as severe. Among pupils aged 7-12, 34% of injuries occurred during sports activities; among the 13-15 age group, 60% were related to sports. A literature review was conducted in order to identify preventive measures shown to be effective in reducing school injuries. The databases used were Cochrane Library (issue 4, 1998), Medline (1966-98) and Embase (1980-98). However, no studies found in the literature had evaluated preventive measures. On the basis of our findings, we suggest that preventive measures should emphasise non-sport injuries among the younger pupils and sport injuries among the older pupils. Preventive measures should be evaluated.