Abstract
This study aimed to investigate associations between the weather conditions and the frequency of medically-treated, non-fatal accidental outdoor fall injuries (AOFIs) in a provincial region of Northwestern Russia. Data on all non-fatal AOFIs that occurred from January 2015 through June 2018 (N = 1125) were extracted from the population-based Shenkursk Injury Registry (SHIR). Associations between the weather conditions and AOFIs were investigated separately for the cold (15 October–14 April) and the warm (15 April–14 October) seasons. Negative binomial regression was used to investigate daily numbers of AOFIs in the cold season, while zero-inflated Poisson regression was used for the warm season. The mean daily number of AOFIs was 1.7 times higher in the cold season compared to the warm season (1.10 vs. 0.65, respectively). The most typical accident mechanism in the cold season was slipping (83%), whereas stepping wrong or stumbling over something was most common (49%) in the warm season. The highest mean daily incidence of AOFIs in the cold season (20.2 per 100,000 population) was observed on days when the ground surface was covered by compact or wet snow, air temperature ranged from −7.0 °C to −0.7 °C, and the amount of precipitation was above 0.4 mm. In the warm season, the highest mean daily incidence (7.0 per 100,000 population) was observed when the air temperature and atmospheric pressure were between 9.0 °C and 15.1 °C and 1003.6 to 1010.9 hPa, respectively. Along with local weather forecasts, broadcasting warnings about the increased risks of outdoor falls may serve as an effective AOFI prevention tool.
Highlights
Falls and fall-related injuries represent a serious health problem worldwide, especially in regions with a cold climate [1,2,3]
2.2% of days had a mean daily air temperature
The median atmospheric pressure and amount of precipitation were similar in the two seasons, whereas the median relative humidity was higher in the cold season
Summary
Falls and fall-related injuries represent a serious health problem worldwide, especially in regions with a cold climate [1,2,3]. In 2015, age-standardized mortality rates from accidental falls in the Nordic countries and Russia were 1.3 times higher than those for the entire World Health Organization. European Region (5.2 per 100,000) [4,5]. Falls are accountable for the largest shares of injury-related deaths and hospitalizations among older adults [6,7], and they are associated with substantial healthcare expenditures [2,8]. In Northern geographic regions, outdoor falls occur more frequently than indoor falls. Studies carried out in Norway, Sweden, the UK, the USA, and Canada have demonstrated that between 55%. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 6096; doi:10.3390/ijerph17176096 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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