Introduction:

Trauma is a worldwide leading cause of external injuries that varies according to the regions. In 2015, trauma injuries were the third cause of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) with the 9% of the total global burden of disease. A portion of the burden of disease is determined by the Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL). In Colombia in 2015, from the total of deaths due to external cause injuries, homicides had the highest number of YPLL with a total of 495.667; traffic accidents had 236.237 YPLL and accidental deaths 90.745 YPLL. The YPLL trauma trends and baselines are important to public health surveillance but there’s no consolidated description. The aim of this study is to determine trauma trends in a five-year period.

Material and methods:

The information was obtained from the reports of Instituto Nacional de Medicinal Legal y Ciencias Forenses in a nine-year period (2007-2015). The reference population was identified through the population projections from the Departmento Administrativo Nacional de Estadistica (DANE). YPLL calculation was compared to a 75 years life expectancy.

Results:

In 2015 trauma injuries in Colombia had a total of 1.920,7 YPLL per 100.000 people. Overall the study period, leading cause of YPLL was homicides (range= 51-68%) and traffic accidents (range= 19-28%), ratio male: female was 7:1 and YPLL observed had decreased. The percentage of the total decrease was 6.3%, the highest increase was observed in 2009 with a raise of 30.5%.

Conclusions:

Homicides are a major public health issue such as the leading cause in YPLL of trauma injuries. Despite there was no increase in sex ratio, younger males are getting more affected trough the time increasing YPLL in this population group. More efforts are needed to improve public health surveillance for assessing baselines, DALYs, policies and evidence for interventions in trauma-related injuries.

        · resumen en Español     · texto en Español     · Español ( pdf )