Hospitalizations for vehicle associated injuries in Wisconsin.

Computerized data from the Wisconsin Office of Health Care Information (OHCI) was utilized to evaluate the epidemiology of vehicle associated injuries treated in acute care Wisconsin hospitals in 1997. There were 6043 vehicle associated injuries which required hospitalization in Wisconsin in 1997, a rate of 141 per 100,000 males and 91 per 100,000 females. Seventy-eight percent of these were motor vehicle traffic related (8% of which involved collisions with pedestrians), 9% were motor vehicle non-traffic related and 6% were pedal cycle related. This study demonstrates how the risk of these various types of vehicle related injuries varied with age, gender, and county of residence, and describes the distribution of morbidity associated with each type. The information described in this paper may be useful in developing hypotheses regarding the causes of vehicle related injuries in Wisconsin, and ultimately lead to the development of interventions which will decrease morbidity, mortality, and costs due to vehicle related injuries.