Brain Injury Awareness Week 2010; August 16-22
Tuesday, 08 December 2009 14:02
Falls are now the leading cause of traumatic brain injury (TBI) throughout the developed world, due to ageing populations. Even though fall-related injuries to the head are consistently the second most common after hip fracture, head trauma in older people is often discounted in health and aged care and appropriate neurological assessment and monitoring overlooked. And though rates of falls-related injuries to the head are rising while those for hip fracture are falling, brain injury fails to feature in Australia’s falls prevention programs.
DID YOU KNOW?
-
-
Falls are also the leading cause of injury hospitalisations overall, accounting for 1 in every 3 - or nearly 126,800 – injury admissions in 2003-2004.
-
Of all causes of traumatic brain injury, falls are the most fatal - 63% resulted in death in 2004-2005.
-
3,300 Australians aged 65 years and over were hospitalised in 2004-2005 with a traumatic brain injury from of a fall.
-
Traumatic brain injuries the result of a fall in Australians aged 65 and over made up 1 in every 7 traumatic brain injury hospitalizations in 2004-2005, across all age groups and causes.
-
Australians aged 65 years and over accounted for 62% of all traumatic brain injury deaths in hospital in 2004-2005 - 1 in every 6 the result of a fall.
-
“Head injury” was the second most common falls-related injury (after those to the hip and thigh) in Australians aged 65 and over during 2005-2006, occurring in 17% of cases.
-
Around 70,000 Australians aged 65 and over were admitted to hospital in 2005-2006 for a falls injury - an increase of 10% over 2003-2004 admission numbers. While falls injuries to the hip and thigh in this age group have fallen, rates of head injury have risen – to almost 1 in every 5 admissions.
-
3,846 falls from ladders resulted in serious injury in 2004–2005. The number of ladder-related injuries involving people aged 60 years and over is increasing at a much higher rate than for any other age group - by 24.2% between 1999 and 2005, more than triple the rate of increase of those aged less than 60.
-
Fall-related injuries are very costly. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimated the healthcare cost during 2003-2004 of falls in people aged 65 and over at $566 million. A study commissioned by the Department of Health and Ageing predicts that by 2051 the total health costs attributable to fall-related injury in the elderly will increase “almost threefold” to $1.375 billion per annum – requiring an additional 886,000 hospital bed days and 3,320 extra residential aged care places
For more information about falls-related traumatic brain injury (TBI), read Brain Injury Australia's 2008-2009 policy paper prepared for the Australian Government's Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.
Download the policy paper [Adobe Acrobat PDF - 338.32 KB]
Check our Events pages for details of specific events during Brain Injury Awareness Week 2010.
Read BIA’s media release for Awareness Week 2010…
Follow us on Facebook!
Continue reading to view and download A3 posters for Brain Injury Awareness Week 2010
Poster Downloads
Download, print and display your own A3 poster for Brain Injury Awareness Week 2010.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of volunteer Kevin Bathman, who designed these outstanding posters for Brain Injury Australia.
Download this poster now. [Adobe Acrobat PDF - 597.81 KB]
Download this poster now. [Adobe Acrobat PDF - 591.04 KB]
Download this poster now. [Adobe Acrobat PDF - 1.03 MB]
Download this poster now. [Adobe Acrobat PDF - 1.04 MB]
Download this postcard now. [JPEG Image - 264.38 KB]
Download this postcard now. [JPEG Image - 286.86 KB]
