The epidemiology of head injury was studied in the Bronx, N.Y., for the period March 1980 through February 1981. Using a ratio estimation sampling scheme the annual incidence rate, age-adjusted to the 1980 US population was estimated to be 249/100,000. Rates for males were more than twice those for females. Incidences were highest for blacks and Hispanics; this was primarily attributable to high rates of injuries caused by violence in young adult males. Violence and falls were the most frequent causes of injuries, and only 27% of all head injuries were associated with traffic accidents. The annual age-adjusted mortality rate was 27.9/100,000. Over half the mortality was associated with head injuries due to violence.

This study explores the potential for the development of a surrogate for alcohol-involved traumatic injury. It presents a bivariate probit analysis that simultaneously models likelihoods of patients being tested for blood alcohol content (BAC) and having positive BACs given testing using 17,356 adult trauma cases selected from the California Regional Trauma Registry. It concludes that patient and injury characteristics predict both testing and BAC, and that a weighting scheme may be profitably used to determine changes in levels of alcohol-involved trauma in populations over time in the absence of empirical measurement of BAC.

The epidemiology of head injury was studied in the Bronx, N.Y., for the period March 1980 through February 1981. Using a ratio estimation sampling scheme the annual incidence rate, age-adjusted to the 1980 US population was estimated to be 249/100,000. Rates for males were more than twice those for females. Incidences were highest for blacks and Hispanics; this was primarily attributable to high rates of injuries caused by violence in young adult males. Violence and falls were the most frequent causes of injuries, and only 27% of all head injuries were associated with traffic accidents. The annual age-adjusted mortality rate was 27.9/100,000. Over half the mortality was associated with head injuries due to violence.

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