Analysis of primary care of victims of interpersonal and self inflicted violence during the COVID-19 pandemic

OBJECTIVES: to analyze the epidemiological profile of aggression victims admitted at the emergency room on a trauma hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic, to compare these data in different restriction periods and with prepandemic data from the same service. METHODS: cross-sectional study with probabilistic sampling using medical records of patients who were victims of aggression admitted at the hospital between June 2020 and May 2021. In addition to the epidemiological variables, other variables collected were the current restriction level, mechanism of aggression, resulting injuries and the Revised Trauma Score (RTS). The data was compared between the three restriction levels and the proportion of attendances during the study period was compared with the pre-pandemic study (December 2016 to February 2018). RESULTS: the average age was 35.5 years, 86.1% of the patients were male and 61.6% of the attendances were due to blunt injury. The highest average of attendances per day occurred during the “yellow” restriction level (2.9), however there was no significant difference when comparing the restriction periods two by two. There was also no significant difference either in the analysis of the standardized residuals of the proportions of aggressions or the mechanism of aggression in the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods. CONCLUSIONS: there was a predominance of attendances due to blunt trauma and in young male patients. There was no significant difference between the average daily attendance for aggression during the three restriction levels and between the proportion of attendances in the pre-pandemic and pandemic period.