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April 24th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
New study shows ER’s in Denver and Aurora finds 129 children suffering gunshot wounds
Given recent firearm-related fatalities combined with declining gun research funding, it is important to monitor firearm injuries in youths. Injury death rates are available but provide an incomplete picture of these potentially preventable injuries. Investigations on worldly trends of both fatal and nonfatal firearm injuries remain scarce, write the researchers.
The Colorado School of Public Health, Denver Health and Children’s Hospital Colorado , goal of this new study was to investigate temporal trends of both fatal and nonfatal firearm injuries in children and adolescents presenting to Colorado urban trauma centers.
For this study researchers examined trauma registries of tow level 1 trauma centers in Denver and Aurora, for all injuries occurring in children and adolescents over a period of nine years and found that 129 of 6,920 injured children suffered gunshot wounds.
The number of gun injuries to children has changed little over the years.
According to state data, Colorado firearm death rates for children were 2.2 per 100,000 in the year 2000, 1.9 per 100,000 in 2009 and 2.8 per 100,000 in 2011
Dr. Angela Sauaia, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Public Health, Medicine, and Surgery at the University of Colorado Denver, Schools of Public Health and Medicine and lead author of study states
“In 14% of these cases children managed to get access to unlocked, loaded guns.” “In an area with so much disagreement, I think we can all agree that children should not have unsupervised access to unlocked, loaded guns.”
The study also found that a minimum of that at least 14 children between the ages 4 and 17 are injured by firearms every year in the Denver metro area alone That number does not include those children that did not go to the emergency department. Dr. Sauaia believes the injury rates exceed 14 or about 2% all trauma admissions.
Dr. Sauaia had also found that those children who had been shot suffered significantly more severe wounds than children hurt with other objects and that the severity of the firearm injuries in increasing.
And at the same time, 50% of shooting victims required intensive care, 13% died compared to 1.7 % of children hurt in non-firearm incidents. The majority of those shot were adolescent males whose injuries were often self-inflicted.
This study did not include the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, which killed 12 students and injured another 21, and also did not include the re also left out.
“When we examined the data we found that 7 percent of the injuries to children were related to violence and of those 38 percent were related to guns,””If the injury was gun related, the odds of dying were 10 times greater than from any other kind of injury.” said Dr. Sauaia.
Dr. Sauaia and colleagues in 1993, conducted a study in which they had found that 42% of people who died from trauma incidents in Denver were killed by guns. That compared to 26% killed in car accidents.
In closing Dr. Sauaia comments “There is little money to do gun research, which is unfortunate.” “But the point we can all agree upon is that, no matter what side of the gun divide you fall on, we need to store these weapons safely to protect our children from death or serious injury.”
The researchers write in a letter to the editor “Given recent firearm-related fatalities combined with declining research funding, it is important to monitor fireman injuries in youths. Injury death rates are available but provide an incomplete picture of these potentially preventable injuries.
Both of Dr. Sauaia studies were entirely conducted without federal funding.
This new study is in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Source Article from http://www.examiner.com/article/firearms-frequently-injuring-or-killing-children?cid=rss
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