Analysis of mortality risk by age-group of patients who visit the emergency room due to suicidal attempts

¹Department of Emergency Medicine, Gachon University Gil Hospital, Incheon, Korea
²Department of Emergency Medicine, Gachon University College of Medicine, Incheon, Korea

Correspondence

Jin-Seong Cho ,Tel: 032-460-3901, Fax: 032-460-3019, Email: jinseongcho@gmail.com,

Received: April 1, 2020; Revised: July 8, 2020 Accepted: August 13, 2020. Published online: June 30, 2021.

ABSTRACT

Objective:
Previous studies lacked an accurate analysis of age-specific mortality because they included either a single hospital’s data or survey-based method, rather than the patient’s information from the emergency room (ER). Therefore, this study analyzed the mortality risk by age group among patients who visited the ER with suicidal attempts using large-scale data.
Method:
Data were collected from the in-depth surveillance data of injury among patients who visited the ERs of 23 hospitals from January 2011 to December 2018. Their ages were divided into 10-year ranges for patients aged 15 years or older (15-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, and ≥75 years). The patients’ sex, alcohol consumption before the injury, time of injury, place of injury, ambulance used for transport to the ER, disposition at the ER, and total deaths were investigated.
Results:
The number of patients was 41,257, of which 38,229 (92.7%) survived and 3,082 (7.3%) died. The proportions of patients in each group who died from suicidal attempts in the 15-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, and ≥75 years groups were 2.7%, 3.1%, 5.4%, 7.8%, 12.0%, 18.5%, and 21.8%, respectively (P<0.001). A statistically positive-response relationship was noted (P trend<0.001). As a result of adjusting for sex, age, place of injury, time of injury, and alcohol consumption in multivariate logistic regression analysis, and the odds ratios of deaths were 1.70, 2.37, 2.86, 5.18, 5.48, and 6.41, respectively (reference, 15-24 years). Moreover, compared to women, the men’s odds ratio of death was 1.58.
Conclusion:
Among patients who visited the ER due to suicidal attempts, those of advanced age and males have high mortality.

Key words: Suicide, Attempted; Mortality; Age groups