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According to an original study, it took almost $ 3 billion to tinker with the children – 75,000 of them, or about 8,300 a year – who ended up in the emergency wards of hospitals with gunshot wounds over a nine year period. A third of these children had to be hospitalized and 6% died, said Johns Hopkins researchers in a study published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Researchers, who analyzed emergency room data from 2006 to 2014, found a slight increase in the number of firearm injuries among children and adolescents in the last year of the study. Recent shootings, such as the Valentine's Massacre at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, highlight the urgent need to understand trends in firearm injuries among youth.
"Massive shootings attract a lot of media and social attention, but unfortunately they do not reflect the current burden of firearm-related injuries," said Dr. Faiz Gani, Research Fellow at the Research Center. on Johns Hopkins surgery and one of the authors of the study, said in a press release.
The study found that one in 11 children and teenagers requiring emergency room intervention had a firearm-related injury of approximately 8,300 per year. But the scope of the problem is broader; The study does not take into account children killed or wounded by bullets and never went to emergency rooms. It also does not take into account the costs of long-term therapy and rehabilitation, as well as expenses related to the work lost to parents after sending the children. House.
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Using data from the National Emergency Sample of the Health Care Costs and Utilization Project, Gator's largest emergency database, Gani and his team analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of 75,086 people under the age of 18 in the United States who arrived alive in emergency room with a gun related injury.
About 86% of them were men with an average of 18 years old. Throughout the study period, men were five times more likely than women to go to emergency with a gun-related injury, and men aged 15 to 17 years had the highest incidence. about 86 emergency visits per 100,000 population.
Assaults accounted for 49% of visits, nearly 38% of accidental gunshot wounds and 2% of suicides, the researchers said. On average, emergency and hospitalization costs amounted to $ 2,445 and $ 44,996 per incident, which corresponds to approximately $ 270 million in annual charges related to gun injuries.
"Our study not only highlights the significant clinical burden and loss of life associated with gunshot wounds, but also highlights the significant economic and financial consequences of these injuries for patients and their families," Gani said.
Dr. Robert Sage, co-author of a policy on gunshot wounds at the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the Associated Press that gun violence extends beyond beyond mass shooting. Sage, a professor of medicine at Tufts University, did not participate in the research.
"It's extremely sad because these kids grow up in fear and this affects their ability to feel safe and comfortable at home or at school," Sage said. "This has a huge training effect on the development of the child."
The National Rifle Association and other members of the gun lobby have lobbied the government to limit research on firearms-related injuries and deaths. Dr. Denise Dowd, an emergency physician at the Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, said this had contributed to gaps in understanding the magnitude of the problem.
"It is really important that we have an idea of the magnitude of lost and injured lives and the amount of money we spend … so that we can make it a priority for health," he said. Dowd at the AP. for effective prevention measures.
"We need national surveillance systems, as we do for motor vehicle deaths, to track these injuries and understand the circumstances," she said.
Gani added, "As a system, we must do much better and can only improve if we focus our efforts on understanding these injuries and develop policies that prevent these injuries for our children."
In July, a study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that, overall, the number of gun related homicides in the United States had increased by 31% between 2014 and 2014. and 2016.
Learn more about the study on gun violence among youth.
Photo via Shutterstock
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