Clinical characteristics and outcomes of injuries of farmers and non-farmers visiting the emergency department: A propensity-matched analysis.

OBJECTIVE: Agriculture is one of the most hazardous industries. However, previous studies have mainly focused on injuries in agricultural workers and have not compared with injuries in non-agricultural workers. Thus, we aimed to compare the clinical characteristics and outcomes of injuries in agricultural workers compared to non-agricultural workers reported at the emergency department(ED).

METHODS: We established a prospective ED-based agricultural injury surveillance system at a tertiary university hospital. The adult injured patients visiting ED were divided into farmer and non-farmer groups depending on the agricultural engagement. Using adjusted multivariate analysis and propensity score matching(age, gender, inhabitant, and insurance type), we compared the clinical characteristics and outcomes of injuries among farmer vs. non-farmer group.

RESULTS: 38,556 adult injured patients(37,746 in non-farmer group and 810 in farmer group) were available for unmatched sample analysis. The 1,620 matched subjects were equally classified after 1-to-1 nearest neighbor propensity score matching. Multivariate logistic regression analysis of the unmatched sample revealed higher adjusted ORs for intensive care unit admission(adjusted OR: 1.752, p=0.003) and overall surgery(adjusted OR: 1.870, p<0.001) for farmers. In contrast, a univariate logistic regression analysis of the propensity score-matched sample found only a higher OR of overall surgery(OR: 1.786, p<0.001) in the farmer group.

CONCLUSIONS: Injuries in agricultural workers only had higher odds of overall surgery, while the differences in mortality were not statistically significant in both the matched and unmatched sample analyses.