The Tendency of the Ambulance Runs Resulting from Bath Accidents in Sapporo and Jozankei Hot Spring Area / 日本温泉気候物理医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

  In recent years, since the accidents during bathing had become a social problem, we analyzed the trend of them in Sapporo city and aimed to make the results well-known to citizens for prevention. Although bathing-related ambulance runs were 0 .71% of all the called emergency cases, the accidental death accounted for 7.4% of the total death toll, and was 1.5 times the traffic death. 11.7% of the bathing-related ambulance runs was the accidental death and they are estimated about 100,000 or more affairs in the whole country. The elderly aged 65 and over occupied 83.9% of the accidental death during bathing. The incidence of cardio-respiratory arrest showed a lower value of 17.6 persons per 100,000 populations than that of other cities. In the elderly, the sum of cardio-respiratory arrest and a loss-of-consciousness reached by 1.7 times of accidental death. In hot spring areas, compared with Sapporo city excluding hot spring areas, there was lesser proportion of accidental death and serious injury. The proportion in which children and adult ages get injured by fall was higher in the hot spring areas. Since it is thought that accidental death continues to increase, and the role in which bathing plays as a preventive care such as recovery from fatigue and a health promotion is large, the preventive emergency is absolutely important.