Injury is a major cause of hospitalisation in Australia, and the leading cause of death for people under 44 years old.
And it is injuries from falls, transport, assault and accidental poisoning that are among the most deadly, according to new data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
In its latest figures, the AIHW looks at these four major causes of hospitalisation and death in more detail, highlighting current trends and changes over the past decade.
Overall, the report found most people were injuring themselves at home, followed by streets or highways.
Of the 1.9 million people who presented to emergency departments with injuries in 2022–2023, the majority were men.
And men were more likely to die from external injuries than women.
The number of injury deaths have generally been increasing over time, but there have been drops and fluctuations across ages, regions and causes.
This is a snapshot of what the data tells us.
Falls
Falls have remained the leading cause of injury-related hospitalisation and deaths in Australia over the past decade and across most regions.
In 2022–2023, falls accounted for more than two in five of all injury hospitalisations, and more than two in five injury deaths in 2021–2022.
Throughout 2021–2022 period, fall injuries were estimated to have cost the health system $4.7 billion.
Falls were the leading cause of injury deaths for both men and women.
AIHW spokesperson Dr Sarah Ahmed said there was a relationship between falls and age.
People over 75 were most likely to be injured in falls.
“The vast majority of falls injury hospitalisations are amongst older Australians,” Dr Ahmed said.
And the country’s ageing population was leading to an increase in rates of falls hospitalisations, she added.
Most falls were related to slipping, tripping and stumbling.
Men were most likely to fall out or through a building or structure, and women from stairs.
All genders under 15 years old were ending up in hospital with injuries from falling from playground equipment.
Transport accidents
Thousands of Australians are hurt or die in road and other transport crashes each year, most commonly while in a car, or on a motorcycle or bicycle.
Transport accidents made up about 11 per cent of all injury hospitalisations in 2022–2023.
But across all types of transport, age groups and sexes, injury rates generally decreased over the past decade.
People aged 15–24 had the highest rate of injury hospitalisations, and men aged over 65 had the highest death rate.
Sixty-one per cent of transport hospitalisations were the result of a collision, mostly involving other vehicles rather than stationary objects.
Patterns also emerged across times of the year, with hospitalisations tending to decrease over winter.
Assault
Assault was the seventh leading cause of injury hospitalisations in 2022–23.
But the likelihood of Australians being hospitalised due to assault had decreased overall during the past decade.
Dr Ahmed said it was “good news” that overall rates of assault hospitalisation and death were going down, but other patterns and trends were starting to emerge.
Assault by bodily force, blunt and sharp objects were the most common types of hospitalisations due to assault in 2022–2023.
“What jumped out at us this year was assault injury hospitalisation due to suffocation, strangulation or hanging,” she said.
“When we compared this year to the average of the past five years, those types of assault injuries were higher this year across every month of the year.
“So there are certain types of assaults that are trending differently.”
Injuries and deaths were most likely among people aged 25 to 44.
Men were the most common perpetrators across all assault types.
The highest rates of assault injury hospitalisations occurred where the perpetrators were a spouse or domestic partners.
These assaults remained considerably higher in women than men, with women aged 25–44 the most affected.
The number of homicides has generally decreased over time.
In 2021-2022, people aged 45–64 had the highest homicide rate of all age groups.
Most perpetrators were males, regardless of victim sex and age, and most had a criminal history.
Accidental poisoning
Injury hospitalisations and deaths due to accidental poisoning mostly involved pharmaceutical substances.
These often included antiepileptics, a class of drugs that prevent or treat seizures, and sedatives.
Narcotics and opioids, such as codeine, morphine and heroin were also among the most common substances causing harm.
Alcohol was the fourth ranked substance.
But hospitalisations due to alcohol poisoning were lower in 2022–23 than the previous five-year average, which showed a seasonal peak in summer.
Accidental poisoning was the third leading cause of injury deaths in 2021–2022.
Hospitalisations had generally decreased over the past decade, but the cases severe enough to require ventilator support had doubled.
Children aged 0–4 were most likely to be affected, but deaths were most common among people aged 45–64.
The most common causes of accidental poisoning in children under four years old involved pharmaceutical substances.
Dr Ahmed said overall the report enabled researchers to flag patterns, and further work would be done to look at the reasons for some of the changes.
“This ongoing work monitors trends in injuries as a major cause of morbidity, permanent disability and mortality with the aim of informing discussion around injury risk, prevention and management,” she said.
“By delving into more detail for these four big causes … our hope is that it drives more of a discussion and some decisions around policy.”
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