New Study Details Gun Injuries Suffered by Children

[struggle4progress]

17. Excerpt:

... Firearm injuries resulting in hospitalization have a large economic impact. The estimated direct hospital costs for all hospitalizations were $147 000 000 in 2009. This figure does not include costs for physician services incident to the hospitalization, emergency medical services, rehabilitation or home health care, hospital readmissions due to late effects of the injuries, mental health treatment or social services, or any indirect economic costs ... As noted previously, the vast majority (89%) of all hospitalizations due to firearm injuries were in males, who experienced a firearm-related hospitalization rate of 15.22 per 100 000 compared with the rate in females of 1.93. This gender difference was apparent even in young children ... Second, studies have attempted to estimate the economic costs of firearm injuries to children and adolescents. For example,in a recent report based on data from 2006 to 2008 from 47 emergency medical services in the West, firearm injuries incurred the highest acute care costs of any childhood injury: $28 510 per patient, nearly double the costs of the next highest injury category (being struck by a motor vehicle: $15 566) ... Due to the young age of the patients in our study, most of the societal costs are likely to result from disability. A 2004 study, using data from the National Pediatric Trauma Registry, reported that nearly half of the children hospitalized for firearm injuries were discharged with a disability ... Most unintentional firearm injuries in children, like many childhood poisonings, fires, and drownings, occur in the home. Public health efforts have led to improvements in the burden of childhood injury associated with other household hazards. A combination of consumer product regulations, public health education, and zoning restrictions has been implemented and aimed at reducing these household injuries, resulting in steady declines in deaths due to residential fires and childhood drownings. In contrast, there have been no robust public health efforts to reduce firearm injuries, based, in part, on federal restrictions on firearms research

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