injury
lborkowski | January 2, 2017The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on Jan. 29, is one of our favorite posts from 2016.
by Kim Krisberg
In the midst of another national debate over gun safety regulations, some argue that higher rates of gun ownership will protect people from dangerous strangers with deadly intentions. Physician and public health researcher Michael Siegel set out to study that argument. He ultimately found no relationship between gun ownership and stranger-related firearm homicides. But he did find that gun ownership levels translated into higher homicide…
CDC: U.S. life expectancy declines, death rates up for heart disease, diabetes, unintentional injury
kkrisberg | December 9, 2016For the first time in more than two decades, U.S. life expectancy has dropped.
This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that in 2015, U.S. life expectancy at birth was 78.8 years — that’s a decrease of 0.1 year from 78.9 years in 2014. Among males, life expectancy went from 76.5 years to 76.3 years; among females, it went from 81.3 years to 81.2 years. According to news reports on the findings, no one single factor caused the drop, but it’s still a cause for concern. Over at The New York Times, Katie Rogers reports:
Dr. Peter Muennig, a professor of health policy and…
dr. dolittle | February 25, 2016 By Hector Bottai (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
I just read an interesting blog entry from I Spy Physiology describing how woodpeckers avoid getting concussions even though they routinely bang their heads. By routinely, I mean an impressive 12,000 times a day approximately. I was amazed to learn that each time a woodpecker taps a tree, the impact is about 10 times that of an average hit in football. Turns out woodpeckers have an anatomical advantage. To find out what that advantage is, visit the blog!
kkrisberg | January 29, 2016In the midst of another national debate over gun safety regulations, some argue that higher rates of gun ownership will protect people from dangerous strangers with deadly intentions. Physician and public health researcher Michael Siegel set out to study that argument. He ultimately found no relationship between gun ownership and stranger-related firearm homicides. But he did find that gun ownership levels translated into higher homicide risks for one group in particular — women.
“Our data refute the hypothesis that the more guns out there, the more of a deterrent there is to strangers…
kkrisberg | April 30, 2014Climbing the corporate ladder is usually associated with promotions, salary raises and executive offices. But for many workers, the common metaphor is part of a real-life job description with real-life risks.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data on occupational ladder falls, finding that a fifth — or 20 percent — of all fall injuries among workers involve a ladder. Among construction workers, 81 percent of all fall injuries treated in an emergency department involved a ladder (overall, falls are a leading cause of death in construction). In 2011, CDC…
dr. dolittle | February 28, 2014 Artist's rendition of dendrite regeneration in a fruit fly during metamorphosis. (Chay Kuo Lab, Duke University)
Researchers at Duke University are interested in understanding the metamorphosis of fruit flies from larvae to adult stage in an effort to understand how the insects grow new nerve endings as they undergo this transition. What is interesting is that the flies lose neurons they will not need as an adult and will grow new nerve endings. According to a press release from Duke University, a protein called Cysteine proteinase-1 (Cp1) is important in the regeneration step. In fact,…
milhayser | February 28, 2014Warm weather at the Winter Olympics played a major part in the $51 billion extravaganza. Greg Laden calls the Sochi games more of a "Fall Olympics" as competitors bit the slush on the slopes and the half pipe. At the Extreme Park, casualties among women outnumbered casualties among men by nearly 3 to 1. Why the gender imbalance? Greg wonders if the men's and women's courses are not suitably dimorphic, or if better training would make a difference. On The Pump Handle, Celeste Monforton takes the panoptic view with the official Olympic injury and illness surveillance system. During the last…
kkrisberg | December 20, 2013People who hold down more than one job not only experience an increased risk of injury at work, but while they’re not at work as well, according to a new study.
Published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health, the study found that multiple job holders had a “significantly” higher injury rate per 100 workers for work- and nonwork-related injuries when compared to single job holders. The study, which was based on 1997-2011 data from the National Health Interview Survey, examined nearly 7,500 injury episodes reported during the 15-year study period, of which 802 were…
esiegel | August 19, 2012“If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.” -Dwight Eisenhower
One of the greatest feelings is the freedom to travel, whether by your own power or a mechanical motor, far faster than your own legs can take you. Kimya Dawson understands how delightful this is (and how much is missing when you can't have it), as you can likely tell from her song,
My Bike
I've always loved the feeling of biking, fast, along a deserted road, feeling the wind rush past me and seeing the world go by.
Image credit: Flickr…
lborkowski | April 6, 2011It's National Public Health Week, and this year's theme is "Safety is No Accident: Live Injury Free." The American Public Health Association notes that in the US each year, nearly 150,000 people die from injuries, and almost 30 million people visit emergency rooms for injuries. They offer safety tips for home, work, play, transportation, and communities.
CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control provides detailed information on what kinds of injuries kill people of different age groups. Here are a few statistics (2007):
Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for…
lborkowski | January 24, 2011On April 5, 2010, a massive explosion at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, killed 29 miners. Last week, federal Mine Safety and Health Administration investigators briefed victims' relatives on what MSHA thinks happened at the mine. (MSHA's official final report is not expected for another 2-3 months, though.) NPR's Howard Berkes reports that the investigators' presentation "pointed to a tragedy that could have been prevented if the Upper Big Branch coal mine had complied with federal safety regulations."
In a related piece, Berkes explains some of the safety…
tsaunders | April 7, 2010
Image by Jespahjoy.
Just before moving to our new home here on Scienceblogs, I asked our readers for ideas on what types of content they would like to see here on Obesity Panacea. One topic that came up several times was the issue of injuries. I'm not sure why we haven't discussed injuries in the past (aside from the fact that it's not the focus of our research), but it was a great idea, and I've come across a study on the topic that I think will be of real interest.
The study is titled "The influence of exercise and BMI on injuries and illnesses in overweight and obese individuals: a…
revere | February 20, 2010The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) has been conducted since 1957 and is one of the main instruments to get a glimpse at the health of the US population. The NHIS is a "multistage area probability design," or what many call cluster sampling. The idea is to first sample geographic areas in all 50 sates and the District of Columbia, where the area might be a county, a small adjoining group of counties in sparsely populated places or a metropolitan area where population is dense. The list of areas to be sampled has about 1900 entries and 428 are drawn at random, although all states are…
revere | February 11, 2010I admit there are some medical articles I just read the press release for. They are almost always articles in journals I don't have easy access to and don't read regularly, but when I run across a press release I find interesting enough to read and maybe post about, it often isn't so compelling I'm going to go out and read the article. It's just mildly interesting and for my purposes the details aren't as important as the main ideas. If you guessed that I'm going to do that now, you'd be right. It's about an article in The Journal of Trauma Injury, Infection, and Critical Care from…
revere | February 8, 2010Most people feel safe at home, but statistically it's not the safest place to be, at least in terms of being injured (here injury includes not only trauma but poisoning, but if we restrict it to trauma probably little is changed). Here's one of CDC's "Quickstat" looks at the percentage distribution of injuries by place of occurrence, as reported in a cluster sample of the US population (the National Health Interview Survey). The years covered are 2004 to 2007:
Source: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
Here's how the NHIS defined these places: home includes both inside and outside…
revere | January 31, 2010I'm coming up for air during my grant writing (so far this weekend I've spent in excess of ten hours yesterday and today just writing; all the rest of the time I spent obsessing about what I wrote and what I still needed to write), but you know I'm desperate when I start posting stuff like this:
UF [University of Florida] researchers reviewed 96 cases that had complete medical records from more than 4,000 entries in the International Shark Attack File, a record maintained by UF's Florida Museum of Natural History. Assigning scores to clinical findings such as blood pressure, location and…
revere | January 18, 2010Many years ago we had a terrific carpenter build stairs in our old house using a technique called housed stringer construction. This guy was fairly young but a skilled wood worker. He was also missing several fingers on his right hand. Table saw.
I used to have a table saw, too, but its spinning blade always made me nervous. So I gave it to my brother-in-law who is a cop and tends to be very careful. He still has all his fingers. But a lot of hobbyist and home do-it-yourselfers don't, courtesy table saws, the woodworking tool associated with more injuries than any other. A new study by the…
revere | December 29, 2009When I recently got rid of my 15 year old car for one that is only 2 years old, I was amazed and impressed at the number of genuine safety features, many of them hidden or not obvious. Cars are simply much safer now than they were, even a decade ago, not to mention when I was a youth. Here's a dramatic example comparing the crashworthiness of a 1959 Chevy Bel Air and a 2009 Chevy Malibu:
Injuries are the major cause of death up to age 44 and the most frequent cause is motor vehicle accidents. Car crashes also cause injury and disability, and one of the more common comes from the sudden…
revere | December 22, 2009I went to medical school in the days when controls on human experimentation were not very robust (I understate). I think about that around Christmas time because one of the ways this penurious medical student used to make a few bucks was by volunteering for medical experiments (and eating Spaghetti-Os at 19 cents a can). One year I desperately wanted to buy my girlfriend an expensive ($20) book (Larousse Gastronomique; last time I mentioned it here she told me -- via email since she lives across the ocean -- she still has it after more than 40 years; hug and a wave from me and Mrs. R.). I…
revere | December 14, 2009I am not a Christian (not now, not ever) but I have always liked Christmas. It's my favorite (secular) holiday and when the time comes (Christmas Eve or Christmas Day) we Reveres will likely write our traditional Christmas post explaining just why we aren't the obligatory curmudgeons on the issue. But that's for then. There is something I really hate about Christmas, although it's not really about Christmas specifically. It is a public health problem and it's probably worse on Christmas Day than any other day of the year. It's clamshell packaging.
I thought about it (for the umpteenth time)…