Cargando…

Non-fatal Home Injuries among the Elderly in Tamil Nadu, India

BACKGROUND: Injuries are considered as an emerging public health problem in India. Globally every year, injuries kill more than 5 million people, and by 2020, injuries will be the third-leading cause of death and disability worldwide. The study aimed to assess the prevalence and characteristics of n...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Joseph, Alex, Bagavandas, M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Wolters Kluwer - Medknow 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6824161/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31728099
http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/ijcm.IJCM_141_19
_version_ 1783464687903440896
author Joseph, Alex
Bagavandas, M.
author_facet Joseph, Alex
Bagavandas, M.
author_sort Joseph, Alex
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Injuries are considered as an emerging public health problem in India. Globally every year, injuries kill more than 5 million people, and by 2020, injuries will be the third-leading cause of death and disability worldwide. The study aimed to assess the prevalence and characteristics of nonfatal home injuries among the elderly in Tamil Nadu. METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted among 1139 elderly (60 years and above), sampled from three districts of Tamil Nadu, India. Probability proportional to size sampling technique was used for sampling; a pretested questionnaire was used to collect the data. RESULTS: Prevalence of nonfatal home injuries among elderly within the past 1 year was 14.6% (12.5–16.7 at 95% confidence interval), (n = 1003), among those injured, 94.5% were unintentionally injured and 5.5% were of intentional nature. When classified according to the types of injuries, majority of them had fall injuries (6.7%) followed by minor domestic injuries (5.4%), animal-related injury (0.2%), burn injuries (1.1%), road traffic injury (0.4%), and suicide attempt (0.8%). Majority of the respondents were in the age group of young-old, 60–69 years of age (84%), and there was more number of males (55%) in the study. CONCLUSION: The study reveals that nonfatal home injuries among elderly are an emerging public health problem, unintentional injuries contribute to the majority of the injuries, fall was the single largest contributor for all injuries among elderly.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6824161
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher Wolters Kluwer - Medknow
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-68241612019-11-14 Non-fatal Home Injuries among the Elderly in Tamil Nadu, India Joseph, Alex Bagavandas, M. Indian J Community Med Original Article BACKGROUND: Injuries are considered as an emerging public health problem in India. Globally every year, injuries kill more than 5 million people, and by 2020, injuries will be the third-leading cause of death and disability worldwide. The study aimed to assess the prevalence and characteristics of nonfatal home injuries among the elderly in Tamil Nadu. METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted among 1139 elderly (60 years and above), sampled from three districts of Tamil Nadu, India. Probability proportional to size sampling technique was used for sampling; a pretested questionnaire was used to collect the data. RESULTS: Prevalence of nonfatal home injuries among elderly within the past 1 year was 14.6% (12.5–16.7 at 95% confidence interval), (n = 1003), among those injured, 94.5% were unintentionally injured and 5.5% were of intentional nature. When classified according to the types of injuries, majority of them had fall injuries (6.7%) followed by minor domestic injuries (5.4%), animal-related injury (0.2%), burn injuries (1.1%), road traffic injury (0.4%), and suicide attempt (0.8%). Majority of the respondents were in the age group of young-old, 60–69 years of age (84%), and there was more number of males (55%) in the study. CONCLUSION: The study reveals that nonfatal home injuries among elderly are an emerging public health problem, unintentional injuries contribute to the majority of the injuries, fall was the single largest contributor for all injuries among elderly. Wolters Kluwer - Medknow 2019-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6824161/ /pubmed/31728099 http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/ijcm.IJCM_141_19 Text en Copyright: © 2019 Indian Journal of Community Medicine http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0 This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
spellingShingle Original Article
Joseph, Alex
Bagavandas, M.
Non-fatal Home Injuries among the Elderly in Tamil Nadu, India
title Non-fatal Home Injuries among the Elderly in Tamil Nadu, India
title_full Non-fatal Home Injuries among the Elderly in Tamil Nadu, India
title_fullStr Non-fatal Home Injuries among the Elderly in Tamil Nadu, India
title_full_unstemmed Non-fatal Home Injuries among the Elderly in Tamil Nadu, India
title_short Non-fatal Home Injuries among the Elderly in Tamil Nadu, India
title_sort non-fatal home injuries among the elderly in tamil nadu, india
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6824161/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31728099
http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/ijcm.IJCM_141_19
work_keys_str_mv AT josephalex nonfatalhomeinjuriesamongtheelderlyintamilnaduindia
AT bagavandasm nonfatalhomeinjuriesamongtheelderlyintamilnaduindia