Work-related traumatic brain injury in Washington State, 1988 through 1990.

Abstract

OBJECTIVES. Brain trauma is a major cause of disability in the United States, especially among young adults. Work-related brain trauma cases represent a subpopulation that may be amenable to intervention efforts, but largely because of unavailability of data, this group has not previously been studied. METHODS. Washington State workers' compensation data were used to identify brain trauma cases and to describe incidence rates with respect to age, gender, and industrial classification. Cause of injury was evaluated for industrial classifications with numerous cases. RESULTS. Washington State workers experienced 301 brain traumas over a 3-year period (9.4/100,000 full-time equivalent workers per year). One third of all traumatic brain injury claims were concentrated among seven industrial classifications. Cause of injury was highly correlated with specific industrial classifications. CONCLUSIONS. This study demonstrates the usefulness of diagnosis-related group codes to identify cases of traumatic brain injury. These injuries are concentrated among a few industries, with a dominant specific cause for each industry. This suggests that intervention methods may be efficiently introduced to reduce traumatic brain injuries in the workplace.

The use of state workers' compensation administrative data to identify injury scenarios and quantify costs of work-related traumatic brain injuries

“…The accident event/ exposure pattern is similar to those reported earlier (Cohen et al, 1999;Heyer & Franklin, 1994). Falls from elevation were the most frequent exposure/event at 39%.…”

“…The results, shown in Table 4, confirmed the existence of previously identified predominant patterns in logging, trucking, roofing, and building construction (Heyer & Franklin, 1994). A new cluster involving motor-vehicle accidents among sales workers/managers was also identified.…”

“…Various case definitions have been used with WC administrative data to characterize the scope of TBI as a workplace injury in the state of Washington (Alexander, Franklin, & Fulton-Kehoe, 1999;Cohen, Kalat, & Silverstein, 1999;Heyer & Franklin, 1994). The problems of using the national definition of TBI to extract case information from a centralized state WC administrative data system, to characterize the scope of TBI in the working population, and to investigate injury etiology are addressed in this article.…”

Work-related mild–moderate traumatic brain injuries due to falls

“…Previous studies have been limited in that they have only been able to characterize the severity of head injuries for falls in general, such as by hospital length of stay [5] or injury severity score [4], whereas in this study it was found that those who sustained a FFE were more likely to sustain multiple injuries (e.g. upper and/or lower limb fractures/injuries, head/neck injuries, spinal injuries) including at least a head injury compared to those who FFSL.…”

“…Traumatic brain injuries are often associated with a slow recovery pattern [2] and significant claim costs [3]. Falls are a major cause of work-related TBI [4][5][6][7] and death [8][9][10]. Although the construction industry is a high-risk population for serious TBI due to falls [4-6, 9, 11], there have been few studies that have characterized workers who experienced a fall and the nature of injuries due to falls in detail such as differentiating between falls from the same level and falls from an elevation [12].…”