Chronic physical health conditions up to five years after serious orthopaedic injury

Background: Information about the prevalence of chronic physical health conditions following serious or-thopaedic injury is currently lacking in the general population and is essential for quantifying the burden of injury and improving outcomes. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of chronic physical health conditions recorded within hospi-talisations and emergency department presentations and associated factors five years following serious orthopaedic injury.Methods: We conducted a registry-based cohort study using data from the Victorian State Trauma Reg-istry (2007-2016) linked with hospital admissions and ED presentations for 16,249 adults with serious orthopaedic injuries. We considered that people who were admitted to hospital or presented to an emer-gency department with a chronic physical health condition one to five years post-injury had "new-onset" conditions. We applied Kaplan-Meier failure curves and Cox proportional hazard regression models to determine factors associated with new-onset conditions.Results: There were 1420 people (11.0%) with at least one new-onset condition. Cancer (6.1%), cardio-vascular disease (5.1%) and hypertension (6.2%) were the three most common "new-onset" chronic phys-ical health conditions. Older adults, women, smokers, and people with mental health and alcohol and drug-related conditions had a higher risk of hospitalisation or emergency department presentation with new-onset conditions post-injury.Conclusion: People with serious orthopaedic injuries experienced a significant additional burden of chronic physical health conditions up to five years after serious orthopaedic injury, posing a new chal-lenge to post-trauma care. Early preventive interventions may be required in people with serious or-thopaedic injuries to minimise modifiable risk factors such as smoking, excessive consumption of alcohol or drug use.(c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.