Injury among adolescents with intellectual disability: A prospective cohort study

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Author(s)
White, David
McPherson, Lyn
Lennox, Nicholas
Ware, Robert S
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2018
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Show full item recordAbstract
Introduction: Injury is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in adolescents worldwide, and injury
rates have been shown to be higher among youth with intellectual disability. Despite this, injury among
adolescents with intellectual disability remains poorly investigated. This study aimed to identify
characteristics associated with injury among adolescents with intellectual disability living in the
community.
Methods: A cohort of adolescents with intellectual disability living in southern Queensland, Australia was
investigated prospectively between January 2006 and June 2010. Personal characteristics were collected
via ...
View more >Introduction: Injury is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in adolescents worldwide, and injury rates have been shown to be higher among youth with intellectual disability. Despite this, injury among adolescents with intellectual disability remains poorly investigated. This study aimed to identify characteristics associated with injury among adolescents with intellectual disability living in the community. Methods: A cohort of adolescents with intellectual disability living in southern Queensland, Australia was investigated prospectively between January 2006 and June 2010. Personal characteristics were collected via postal questionnaire. Injury information, including mechanism and location of injury, was extracted from general practitioner records. The association between demographic, social and clinical characteristics of participants and episodes of injury was investigated using negative binomial regression. Results: A total of 289 injuries were recorded from 432 participants over 1627.3 years of study-time. The overall annual injury incidence was 17.5 (95%CI 14.7, 20.9) per 100 person years. Presence of ADHD and less severe disability was associated with increased risk of injury. Down syndrome and reduced verbal communication capacity were associated with decreased risk of injury. Falls accounted for the highest single mechanism of injury (19.0%) with the majority (73.2%) of injuries involving either upper or lower limbs. Conclusions: ADHD is a co-morbidity that increases risk of injury among adolescents with intellectual disability. A critical component of injury prevention is avoidance of the great variety of environmental risk factors for injury relevant to this population.
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View more >Introduction: Injury is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in adolescents worldwide, and injury rates have been shown to be higher among youth with intellectual disability. Despite this, injury among adolescents with intellectual disability remains poorly investigated. This study aimed to identify characteristics associated with injury among adolescents with intellectual disability living in the community. Methods: A cohort of adolescents with intellectual disability living in southern Queensland, Australia was investigated prospectively between January 2006 and June 2010. Personal characteristics were collected via postal questionnaire. Injury information, including mechanism and location of injury, was extracted from general practitioner records. The association between demographic, social and clinical characteristics of participants and episodes of injury was investigated using negative binomial regression. Results: A total of 289 injuries were recorded from 432 participants over 1627.3 years of study-time. The overall annual injury incidence was 17.5 (95%CI 14.7, 20.9) per 100 person years. Presence of ADHD and less severe disability was associated with increased risk of injury. Down syndrome and reduced verbal communication capacity were associated with decreased risk of injury. Falls accounted for the highest single mechanism of injury (19.0%) with the majority (73.2%) of injuries involving either upper or lower limbs. Conclusions: ADHD is a co-morbidity that increases risk of injury among adolescents with intellectual disability. A critical component of injury prevention is avoidance of the great variety of environmental risk factors for injury relevant to this population.
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Journal Title
Injury
Volume
49
Issue
6
Copyright Statement
© 2018 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.
Subject
Clinical sciences
Clinical sciences not elsewhere classified
Nursing
Health services and systems
Public health