Different Risks of Traumatic and Non-Traumatic Injuries Attributable to Temperature in Seoul, Korea

Abstract

ISEE-0520 Background and Objective: Several studies reported that the occurrence of injury has seasonality and the fluctuation depends on temperature. Although the injury occurs from various factors, many studies on injury have been focused on specific diseases or sports. In addition, there were little studies on the effect of temperature on occurrence of injury. Therefore, the aim of this study is to evaluate the association between daily counts of sub-categories of injury such as traumatic and non-traumatic injuries and daily mean temperature. Methods: Data on injury were derived from the emergency ambulance delivery database of the National Emergency Management Agent (NEMA) in Korea from 2006 to 2008. We counted daily ambulance delivery according to four categories, such as total injury, traumatic and non-traumatic injuries as well as total disease. The classification of injury was based on International Classification of External Cause of Injury (ICECI). The generalized additive models (GAM) were used to examine the association between the daily counts of ambulance delivery by four categories and the mean temperature, controlling for confounding factors such as relative humidity, national holidays, and long-term trends. Results: The daily counts of total injury, traumatic injury, non-traumatic injury and total disease showed strongly seasonality. We found that rate ratio (RR) of daily counts of total injury was 1.0047 (95% CI = 1.0033–1.0063) corresponding to 1°C increase of mean temperature. The RR of non-traumatic injury (1.0114, 95% CI = 1.0095–1.0132) was much higher than of traumatic injury (1.0022, 95% CI = 1.0004–1.0041), even controlling for confounding factors. The association between total disease and temperature was also significant (RR = 1.0061, 95% CI = 1.0048–1.0074). Conclusion: The occurrence of injury, attributable to temperature, were different depending on whether the type of injury is traumatic or non-traumatic. The effect of temperature on non-traumatic injury was higher than traumatic injury.