NEW ORLEANS - A University of Tennessee study found a link between unemployment rates and a type of trauma seen in hospital emergency rooms in pre-Katrina New Orleans.
Atul Madan of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and colleagues examined unemployment rates in New Orleans from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the registry of trauma emergency room admissions from January 1994 and November 1999 at the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans -- known as Charity Hospital.
The study, published in Springer's World Journal of Surgery, found the higher the unemployment rate, the higher the number of admissions for penetrating trauma -- injuries by an object piercing the skin such as bullets and knives.
However, the lower the unemployment rates, the higher the number of admissions for blunt trauma -- the majority of them the result of motor vehicle collisions.
Madan said a possible explanation for the finding could be that with higher employment and higher incomes, more travel is likely, resulting in more accidents.
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