Child injuries in Bergen, Norway

We undertook a prospective collection of data on all children below the age of 16 presenting with a history of trauma to the Accident and Emergency Department and at Haukeland University Hospital in the city of Bergen, Norway, during 1998. Our study included 7.041 new injuries, giving an annual injury incidence of 9% for preschool children, and 13% for children aged 6 to 15. Boys were injured more often than girls, and they hurt themselves equally at all age groups. Girls, however, had the lowest incidence of injury at 4-6 years of age, and two peaks at 2 and at 10-12 years of age. In the youngest children there was a predominance of head injury (51%) while in school children upper extremity injury was the commonest (46%). Most of the younger children sustained their injuries at home, while older children were injured both at home and school. Sixty percent of all medically treated patients with injuries associated with roller blade, skateboard or snowboard activities sustained a fracture. These newer sports create a new injury pattern, but soccer and bicycle injuries still predominate. On comparing our data with previous studies performed a decade ago, we found a significant decline in bicycle injuries (p=0.019), but burns are still as common (p=0.35), which suggests a need to focus more on burns prevention.