Emergency rooms treat a gunshot wound every half-hour
U.S. emergency room doctors treat a gunshot wound every half-hour, a new study has found.
What's more, firearm injuries appear to follow specific patterns throughout the year, with gun violence occurring more often at certain times, according to research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Firearm injury Emergency Department visit rates were highest during evenings, weekends, summer months and holidays, noted the research team led by Dr. Adam Rowh, an epidemic intelligence service officer at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
For the study, researchers analyzed ER gun injury visits that took place between January 2018 and August 2023 in nine states and the District of Columbia. The states were Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.
They found more than 93,000 firearm-related ER visits during that five-year period, which amounted to about 74 cases for every 100,000 visits -- roughly one every 30 minutes.
Results also showed that gun injury ER visits gradually increase from the afternoon into the night, and hit their average peak between 2:30 and 3 a.m.
Average daily rates were highest on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, researchers found. The most dangerous day was New Year's Eve, and the most dangerous month was July.
Other holidays with high rates of ER-treated gun injuries included Independence Day, Memorial Day and Halloween.
This was the largest study so far to investigate patterns of firearm injuries related to different times of the day, week and year, researchers said.
"These findings support and expand on previous research demonstrating differences in firearm injury incidence according to time of day, day of the week, holiday status, and time of year," researchers wrote.
Hospitals can use these findings to beef up ER staff during periods when more gun violence can be expected, researchers said.
Police and community workers can also use the data to prepare for times when people are more likely to be shot, the team added.
More research should be done into why these specific times appear related to gun violence, the authors concluded.
"Understanding the factors contributing to the temporal patterns of firearm injury presents a valuable opportunity for future prevention efforts, and implementation of policies, programs, and practices grounded in the best available evidence can bolster states' and communities' prevention efforts," researchers wrote.
The new study appears in the May issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.
More information
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has more on gun violence in the U.S.
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