Ten years of trauma in the 'top end' of the Northern Territory, Australia: a retrospective analysis.

To examine characteristics of traumatic injury in adults and children at the Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH) over a 10 year period. A retrospective review of the RDH Trauma Registry data from 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2012, with analysis of patient demographics, mechanism of injury, Injury Severity Score (ISS), and outcome. Two thousand seven hundred twenty-five patients with an ISS greater than or equal to 9 and met all other study inclusion criteria. Motor vehicle crashes, assaults and falls consistently remained the three most common mechanisms of injury throughout the 10 year period. Indigenous admissions showed a significant downward trend (p?=?0.009). Upward trends were noted in presentations from patients aged greater than 44 (p?=?0.002), all-terrain vehicle accidents (p?<0.001), and hangings (p?=?0.003). No other trends were noted to significant at a p?<0.05 level. Admitted Indigenous patients were significantly more likely to be present due to assault (p?<0.001) and female patients were more likely to present due to assault, falls and motor vehicle crashes (p?<0.01) than their counterparts. Presentations for traumatic injury to Royal Darwin Hospital have remained in the most part, consistently stable for the period of 2003-2012. Though there were some increases/decreases in regard to specific demographics and mechanisms, few were found to be statistically significant at a p?<?0.05 level