Pattern and Outcomes of Fall Injuries and Associated Factors in Emergency Department at Addis Ababa Burn, Emergency...

Fall injuries are an important public health concern and remain a growing health problem globally. Falls are predicted to rise in rank compared to other causes of death, to become the 17th leading cause of death by 2030 unless necessary intervention is given.

This study was aimed to assess the pattern, outcomes of fall injuries, and associated factors.

A cross-sectional study design was employed to review a patient's registration chart from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2019. Data were collected using a structured checklist developed from previous similar studies. The checked data were entered into Epi data 4.1 versions. Then, it was exported to SPSS 25 versions for analysis. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and logistic regression. In the multivariate logistic regression predictors having a P-value < 0.05 were considered to be statistically associated.

A total of 331 patients' charts were reviewed. The most common outcome of falling injury was alive 284 (85.8%) while death accounts for 47 (14.2%). Among injured body parts, extremity accounts for around one-fourth, 88 (26.6%), followed by head injury 68 (20.5%). In multivariate logistic regression, those patients aged ≥65 years had 6.15 times more likely to die than those patients aged between 15 and 30 years (AOR 6.15; 95% CI 2.82-14.37, P=0.015), and participants with comorbidity were 1.6 times more likely to die than to be discharged (AOR 1.60; 95% CI, 1.01-5.09, P=0.005) due to falling injury, whereas patient's occupation, marital status, and sex had no significant association with outcomes of a fall injury.

The most common outcomes of fall injury were discharged with improvement even though there was a high death rate. Extremity injuries were the most common pattern of injury. Fall is high-risk mortality in the older age group. Furthermore, patient with comorbidity, fall from height and injury to spinal cord and poly-trauma is more likely to die relative to other patients.