Although results did not reach significance because of strong clustering effects, a trend was found suggesting that a school-based educational programme to improve falling skills may be more beneficial for the prevention of falling-related injuries in children with low levels of habitual physical activity.
Background
In the Netherlands annually 39 000 children aged 8–12 years have to be treated medically due to a fall incident. The number of wrist fractures in this age group has increased with 32% over the period 2004–2008.
Objective
Primary objective is to describe the effectiveness of a school-based programme aimed at the prevention of physical activity (PA) related fall injuries in Dutch primary school children.
Design
In a prospective randomised control trial 35 primary schools were assigned to the intervention group (n=19) and control group (n=16). Randomisation took place at school level.
Setting
Physical education classes in school.
Participants
Children attending PA classes in grades 4, 5 and 6 participated in the study: 1539 in the intervention group and 1920 children in the control group.
Intervention
A teaching package with exercises. It includes a teacher's manual, teaching aids, a DVD with exercises, an exercise ball and a book on fall techniques.
During 8 weeks, children learn exercises from different levels of difficulty. The first four lessons form the base of the program, with one lesson to be taught each week. The second part consists of follow-up lessons, in which the core is extended in difficulty.
Main outcome measurements
The number of injuries due to fall accidents, knowledge, risk perception, self-efficacy in relation to falling and fall techniques.
Results
The results will be available in October 2010. First indications show children in the intervention group have less accidents and better knowledge of how to fall safely than children in the control group. There seem to be no differences in risk perception or self-efficacy.
Conclusions
Although the overall results are not yet available, first indications suggest that the teaching package is effective: the incidence of injuries due to falls is lower in the intervention group than in the control group.
Cycling, which is very popular in the Netherlands, has known health benefits, but can also lead to accidents and injuries. In 2016 in the Netherlands 120.000 people were treated at an Emergency Department due to a traffic injury, which is 19% of all unintentional injuries. Of those road traffic injuries 60% can be attributed to cyclists. To monitor accidents and injuries, the Netherlands has a continuous injury registration at 14 ED’s: the Dutch Injury Surveillance System. DISS is representative for all ED’s and provides the possibility to perform follow up studies with patients.The objective of this study was to gather insight in self-reported causes and risk factors of cycling injuries.In this case control study a questionnaire was sent to patients who visited one of the 14 DISS ED’s after a cycling accident (n=3.146) in 2016, and to a control group (n=1.811) with cyclists who did not have a bicycle accident in the previous year.After controlling for factors such as age and kilometres travelled, we found no differences in injuries between classical and electronic bicycles. (dis)Mounting is often mentioned as a cause of injury by senior cyclists. Cyclists own behaviour and behaviour of other road users play an important role in causing injuries. However, the specific use of a smartphone was not an important cause of cycling accidents. Environmental factors such as the state of the road appeared to be crucial as well.
Alcohol related injuries and intoxications are common and a burden to society. For policy makers it is important to have insight in the scope of the problem. In the Netherlands the Dutch Injury Surveillance System (DISS) monitors accidents and injuries. DISS is the most advanced specification of the European Injury Database (IDB). At 14 Emergency Departments in the Netherlands all patients with injuries are registered. At this moment an injury is only coded as ‘an injury involving alcohol’ if the use of alcohol is obvious or medically relevant. This leads to an underestimation of accidents involving alcohol. Intoxications, defined as ‘effects of alcohol use being the main cause of the ED visit’, however, are mostly registered correctly. According to DISS in 2016 roughly 5.600 people were treated at an ED for an alcohol intoxication; 16.300 injuries involved alcohol use. The objective of this study was to improve the registration of alcohol related injuries at EDs. Therefore different methods were implemented. Firstly, we asked professional physicians associations to collaborate with us get the new registration method implemented. After several focus group discussions, registration of the doctors own clinical judgement appeared to be a better alternative than to ask every patient if alcohol played a role in the accident. This means that doctors have to answer the question: ‘Is this visit to the ED (also) caused by the use of alcohol?’ Secondly, data collection of this variable will be facilitated within the hospital information system. Results and trends will be available by the end of 2018.
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