This represents 7% of injury deaths and 0.3% of injury hospitalisations.
Choking on objects is the most common cause of death in this category, while a foreign body in the respiratory tract is the most common cause of hospitalised injury.
Older people have the highest rates of death by choking and suffocation, while young children have the highest rates of hospitalisation.
This report summarises data on unintentional choking and suffocation only. Intentional injuries are included under Self-harm injuries and suicide or Assault and homicide.
This category is also referred to as other accidental threats to breathing and is separate from drowning.
Hospitalisations where the cause of injury is W44 Foreign body entering into or through eye or natural orifice and the type of injury is a foreign body in the respiratory tract (T17.2–T17.8) were included under Contact with objects in previous versions of this report. For this update, these injuries have been re-classified here under Choking and suffocation.
Inhalation or ingestion of an object other than food caused 78% of the deaths in this category in 2019–20 as well as 21% of the hospitalisations in 2020–21. A foreign body in the respiratory tract caused a further 41% of the hospitalisations. (Tables 1a and 1b).
Table 1a: Causes of choking and suffocation hospitalisation, 2020–21
Cause
|
Hospitalisations
|
%
|
Rate (per 100,000)
|
Foreign body in respiratory tract (W44 + T17.2–T17.8)
|
672
|
41
|
2.6
|
Inhalation and ingestion of food causing obstruction of respiratory tract (W79)
|
545
|
33
|
2.1
|
Inhalation and ingestion of objects other than food causing obstruction of respiratory tract (W80)
|
345
|
21
|
1.3
|
Other (W75–78, W81–84)
|
95
|
6
|
0.4
|
Total
|
1,657
|
100
|
6.5
|
Notes
- Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
- Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.
- Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10-AM (11th edition) external cause codes (ACCD 2019).
Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.
Table 1b: Causes of choking and suffocation death, 2019–20
Cause
|
Deaths
|
%
|
Rate (per 100,000)
|
Inhalation and ingestion of objects other than food causing obstruction of respiratory tract (W80)
|
770
|
78
|
3.0
|
Inhalation and ingestion of food causing obstruction of respiratory tract (W79)
|
114
|
11
|
0.4
|
Other (W75–78, W81–84)
|
108
|
11
|
0.4
|
Total
|
992
|
100
|
3.9
|
Notes
- Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
- Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.
- Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10-AM (11th edition) external cause codes (ACCD 2019).
Source: AIHW National Mortality Database.
For more detail, see Data tables B5-6 and E7-9.
Hospitalisations due to choking and suffocation do not show a strong seasonal pattern.
Some other causes of injury do show seasonal differences in hospitalisations – see the interactive display.
Figure 1: Seasonal differences in hospitalisations due to choking and suffocation, 2018–19 to 2020–21

Notes
- Admission counts have been standardised into two 15-day periods per month.
- A scale up factor has been applied to June admissions to account for cases not yet separated.
Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.
Trends over time
The age-standardised rate of hospitalisations due to choking and suffocation in 2020–21 was 7.9% higher than the previous year.
Over the period from 2011–12 to 2016–17 there was an average annual increase of 0.6% for the age-standardised rate of hospitalisation.
There is a break in the time series for hospitalisations between 2016–17 and 2017–18, due to a change in data collection methods (see the technical notes for details).
For deaths due to choking and suffocation, the age-standardised rate for 2019–20 was 15% lower than a year earlier. Between 2010–11 and 2019–20 there was an average annual decrease in rate of 2.5% (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Choking and suffocation hospitalisations and deaths, by sex and year