Abstract
Injury is one of the leading causes of death in the Republic of Korea (ROK), alongside cancer and heart disease, accounting for 27,812 deaths in 2023 (7.9% of all deaths). This article aims to identify the scale and changing patterns of injury cases in ROK, analyze their epidemiological characteristics from from the Korea National Hospital Discharge In-depth Injury Survey in 2022. In 2022, the discharge rate of injured patients was 2,212 per 100,000 people and included 2,272 males and 2,153 females. Among individuals aged 65 years and older, females had a higher discharge rate than males. The average length of hospital stay for injured patients was 12.6 days, which is longer than the overall average for hospitalized patients (7.8 days), with an increase in hospital stay duration corresponding to an increase in age. The leading mechanisms of injury in injury-related discharges were slips and falls (1,070 per 100,000 population), traffic accidents (477), and collisions (239). Traffic accident-related injuries declined from 801 in 2012 to 477 in 2022, whereas injuries caused by slips and falls increased from 730 to 1,070 during the same period. The most common locations for injury occurrence were roads and highways (26.7%) and residential areas (20.1%). Males had a notably higher proportion of injuries at industrial and construction sites. Intentional self-harm showed an increasing trend among adolescents (ages 13–18 years) and individuals aged 65 and older. In adolescents, the discharge rate for cases of self-harm rose by 128.6%, with the rate for female adolescents being 3.2 times higher than that of their male counterparts.