Ten percent of people who died from trauma before they reached hospital had survivable injuries, new research studying fatalities in Otago and Southland shows.
Former Dunedin Hospital emergency department registrar Dr James Falconer, now based at Canberra Hospital in Australia, looked at almost 200 trauma-related deaths in Otago and Southland between 2000 and 2004.
While just over half of the deaths were due to non-survivable injuries, mostly involving the head and chest, the study also found 10% had survivable injuries and 35% had "potentially survivable" injuries.
Dr Falconer said despite trauma being the leading cause of death in New Zealanders aged between 1 and 34 years, and the fourth overall most common cause of death, there had been no studies looking at the preventability of trauma deaths in New Zealand.
"Ten percent is still 10% too many people who have survivable injuries but are dying."
Of the 200 deaths, motor vehicle accidents accounted for 70% of the fatalities, 13% were due to falls, 5% to aircraft accidents, 5% to assaults and 7% were classified as other.
The study did not look at why people died or other factors, such as weather, road configuration or if people were driving while intoxicated.
Working in the emergency department meant he saw a lot of trauma, particularly from road accidents, and he had wondered how New Zealand statistics compared to other countries and if things could be done better, but there was no data available, Dr Falconer said.
He began his research while working in Dunedin.
He decided to study fatalities in Otago and Southland because it was a large region, with long travel times, and if there was going to be differences compared to other countries, it would likely be most marked in the southern region.
The results, however, were similar to other countries, such as Australia and Sweden, which meant New Zealand could now look to those countries to see what measures they were implementing to reduce trauma-related deaths.
He believed New Zealand needed a national trauma registry, which would allow quality assessment, standardisation and co-ordination of care throughout the country.
Dr Falconer presented the results of his study in poster format at the annual scientific meeting of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine being held in Melbourne this week.
