Contact with living things

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Injuries caused by contact with living things include bites, stings and envenomation from animals, insects and plants, along with unintentional person-to-person contact—such as while playing sport.

Injuries caused by contact with living things resulted in:

This represents 5.2% of injury hospitalisations and 0.2% of injury deaths.

In medical coding terms, this topic includes exposure to animate mechanical forces, contact with venomous animals and plants and exposure to or contact with allergens: allergy to animals.

Because of the low number of deaths from contact with living things, they are not described further below.

This category only includes unintentional injuries. Intentional harm is included under Assault and homicide.

Causes of hospitalisation

In 2020–21:

• Contact with non-venomous animals was the top cause (57%) of hospitalisations in this category (Table 1). Of these, 53% involved dogs (Table 2)
• person-to-person contact accounted for 31% of hospitalisations in this category (Table 1)
• of hospitalisations involving venomous animals, spiders were the most common (27%) (Table 3).

Notes
1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.
3. Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10-AM (11th edition) external cause codes (ACCD 2019).
4. Person-to-person contact includes being hit, struck, kicked, twisted, bitten or scratched by another person, striking against or bumping into another person, and being crushed, pushed or stepped on by crowd or human stampede. Injuries involving a fall because of a collision with or pushing by another person are not included. See Falls.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Notes
1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. Percentages and rate may not sum  to total due to rounding.
3. Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10-AM (11th edition) external cause codes (ACCD 2019).

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Notes
1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. Percentages may not sum  to total due to rounding.
4. Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10-AM (11th edition) external cause codes (ACCD 2019).

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables B19–20.

Seasonal differences

Hospital admissions due to contact with living things display a minor seasonal pattern, with peaks in summer and autumn before a low from July to October (Figure 1).

In March 2020, COVID-19 restrictions interrupted the usual activity of Australians. These restrictions coincided with a marked drop in overall injury hospitalisations. For injuries due to contact with living things, there were 28% fewer admissions from March to May 2020 than in the same period of the previous year.

The interactive display illustrates other seasonal differences in injury hospitalisations.

Figure 1: Seasonal differences in hospitalisations due to contact with living things, 2018–19 to 2020–21

Notes
1. Admission counts have been standardised into two 15-day periods per month.
2. 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 contact with living things in 2020–21 was 19% higher than the previous year. The previous year had seen a drop in injury hospitalisations most likely caused by COVID-19 restrictions (Figure 2).

Over the period from 2011–12 to 2016–17 there was an average annual increase of 3.2% for the age-standardised rate of hospitalisations.

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).

Figure 2: Injury hospitalisations due to contact with living things, by sex and year

Age and sex differences

Rates of injuries caused by contact with living things differ for males and females and across age groups. In 2020–21:

• 58% of the hospitalisations were for males
• the age-standardised rates of hospitalisation were:
  • 139 cases per 100,000 males, and
  • 98 per 100,000 females
• young people aged 15–24 had the highest rate of hospitalisation, for both males and females (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Injury hospitalisations and deaths due to contact with living things, by age group and sex, 2020–21

For more detail, see Data tables B19–20.

Severity

There are many ways that the severity, or seriousness, of an injury can be assessed. Some of the ways to measure the severity of hospitalised injuries are:

• number of days in hospital
• time in an intensive care unit (ICU)
• time on a ventilator
• in-hospital deaths.

Injuries due to contact with living things appear less severe than the average for all hospitalised injuries (Table 4).

Note: Average number of days in hospital (length of stay) includes admissions that are transfers from one hospital to another or transfers from one admitted care type to another within the same hospital, except where care involves rehabilitation procedures.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables A13–15.

Types of injury sustained

In 2020–21, the wrist and hand was the body part most often identified as the main site of injury in hospitalisations caused by contact with living things (32%), followed by the head and neck (21%) (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Hospitalised injuries due to contact with living things, by main body part injured, 2020–21

Hover over a body part for more information:

Notes

1. Main body part refers to the principal reason for hospitalisation.
2. ‘Trunk’ includes thorax, abdomen, lower back, lumbar spine & pelvis.
3. Number and percentage of injuries classified as Other, multiple, and incompletely specified body regions and Injuries not described in terms of body region not shown—see Data table A11.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data table A11.

Open wounds were the most common type of injury for people who were hospitalised due to contact with living things, followed by fracture (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Hospitalised injuries due to contact with living things, by type of injury, by sex, 2020–21

For more detail, see Data table A10.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

In 2020–21, among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people:

• there were almost 2,100 hospitalisations due to contact with living things, with the rate for males 1.6 times as high as for females (Table 5)
• hospitalisation rates were highest in the 25–44 and 15–24 age groups, compared with other age groups (Figure 6).

Note: Rates are crude per 100,000 population.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians

In 2020–21, Indigenous Australians, compared with non-Indigenous Australians, were 2.1 times as likely to be hospitalised due to contact with living things (Table 6).

Deaths are not compared here because of low numbers.

Notes

1. Rates are age-standardised per 100,000 population.
2. ‘Non-Indigenous Australians’ excludes cases where Indigenous status is missing or not stated.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Figure 6: Injury hospitalisations due to contact with living things, by Indigenous status, by age group and sex, 2020–21

For more detail, see Data tables A4–6.

Remoteness

In 2020–21, people living in Australia’s Very remote areas, compared with people living in Major cities, were 3 times as likely to be hospitalised due to contact with living things (Table 7).

Deaths data are not presented because of small numbers.

Note: Rates are age-standardised per 100,000 population.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

The highest age-specific rate of injury hospitalisation due to contact with living things was among the 15–24 age group living in Remote areas of Australia. (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Injury hospitalisations caused by contact with living things, by remoteness, by age group and sex, 2020–21

For more detail, see Data tables A7–9.

For information on how statistics are calculated by remoteness, see the technical notes.

Data details

Technical notes: how the data were calculated

Data tables: download full data tables

Glossary

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