Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 13, 2026

Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli
Published on: August 18, 2023
The Evolution of Trauma in Los Angeles County Over More Than a Decade
Sean Shaohua Chen1, Nichole Bosson, Marianne Gausche-Hill
1Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, Emergency Medical Services Agency, Santa Fe Springs, California (Messrs Chen and Tadeo and Drs Bosson and Gausche-Hill); Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA, Torrance, California (Drs Bosson and Gausche-Hill); David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California (Drs Bosson and Gausche-Hill); and Martin Luther King Jr Community Hospital, Los Angeles, California (Ms Gorospe).
Objective:
Explore trends in trauma incidence and mortality rates in Los Angeles County.
Design:
Data for patients treated at Los Angeles County trauma centers from 2000 to 2011 were analyzed for this study. Age-adjusted incidence and mortality rates were calculated by gender, race, injury type, injury severity, and mechanism of injury. Trends were assessed using linear regression to determine the annual percentage change (APC).
Results:
There were 223 773 patients included. The trauma incidence rate increased by 14.6% driven by an increase in blunt injury of 5.4% annually (P < .05). Penetrating injury decreased at -6.9% APC (P < .01). Mortality rate decreased at -11.5% APC (P < .01), with reduction in both blunt (-6.8% APC [P < .01]) and penetrating injuries (-16.7% APC [P < .01]). The trends in mortality persisted with stratification by age, gender, race, and injury severity score.
Conclusion:
In this mature trauma system, the trauma incidence increased slightly from 2000 to 2011, while the mortality steadily declined. Public health officials in other areas could perform a similar self-evaluation to describe and monitor injury events and trends in their jurisdictions, a reassessment of priority and trauma system resource allocation, which will directly benefit the regional population.
Related Concept Videos
The Evidence for Evolution
Convergent Evolution
Eukaryotic Evolution
Contrary to the endosymbiont theory, the eukaryote-first hypothesis proposes that the simpler prokaryotic and...
Synteny and Evolution
Around 80 million years ago, the human and mice lineages diverged from the common ancestor. During the course of evolution, the ancestral...
Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?
Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?
In contrast, regions which code...

