Head injuries in country and city. A study of hospital separations in South Australia.

The incidence of head injury in South Australia was estimated from hospital separation (discharges, transfers and deaths) data for 1980 and 1981. The rate of hospital separation of patients with head injury in these years was high by international standards, and was 33% greater for country residents than for residents of the Adelaide metropolitan area. Marked differences in separation rates were observed between different age, sex and occupational groups. On the basis of indirect measures of injury severity, the injury severity threshold for admission to hospital with head injury appeared to be similar in country and city hospitals. An attempt was made to estimate the number of people seriously disabled by head injury each year. The findings raise questions about the concentration of acute surgical and long-term rehabilitation services in the city, at the expense of country areas; they also provide a starting point for further, analytical studies of head injury.