Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Recovery from injury: the UK Burden of Injury Multicentre Longitudinal Study
  1. Denise Kendrick1,
  2. Yana Vinogradova1,
  3. Carol Coupland1,
  4. Caroline A Mulvaney2,
  5. Nicola Christie3,
  6. Ronan A Lyons4,
  7. Elizabeth L Towner5,
  8. on behalf of the UK Burden of Injuries Study Group
  1. 1Division of Primary Care, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  2. 2School of Nursing, Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham, UK
  3. 3Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, Centre for Transport Studies, UCL, London, UK
  4. 4College of Medicine, Swansea University, Swansea, UK
  5. 5Centre for Child & Adolescent Health, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
  1. Correspondence to Professor Denise Kendrick, Division of Primary Care, University of Nottingham, Floor 13, Tower Building, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK; denise.kendrick{at}nottingham.ac.uk

Abstract

Objectives To estimate the likelihood of recovery at 1, 4 and 12 months post injury and investigate predictors of recovery in injured people attending an emergency department (ED) or admitted to hospital in the UK.

Methods Participants completed questionnaires at recruitment and 1, 4 and 12 months post injury or until recovered. Data were collected on injury details, sociodemographic characteristics, general health prior to injury and recovery. We compared three age groups: 5–17, 18–64 and 65 years and above. Modified Poisson regression estimated the relative risk of recovery. Multivariable models were built using backward stepwise regression. Sensitivity analyses assessed the effect of missing data.

Results We recruited 1517 participants, 55% (n=836) ED attenders and 44% (n=661) hospital admissions. By 1 month after injury, 28% (285/968) had fully recovered, 54% (440/820) at 4 months and 71% (523/738) at 12 months. Recovery was independently associated with gender, admission status, injury severity, body region injured and place of injury for 5–17 year olds and 18–64 year olds and with gender, admission status, injury severity and long-term illness for those aged 65+. Injury severity and hospital admission were associated with recovery across all age groups, but not at every time point in each age group. Other factors varied between age groups or time points. Results were generally robust to imputing missing data.

Conclusions A range of factors was found to predict recovery among injured people. These could be used to identify those at risk of delayed recovery and to inform the design of interventions to maximise recovery.

  • Outcome of Injury

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.