In 2017, for every victim who died of a firearm injury in the U.S, three individuals survived. But the burden of firearm injuries is not limited to death. A new study led by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital finds that 6-to-12 months after traumatic injury, rates of chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other poor physical and mental health outcomes were alarmingly high among survivors of firearm violence — even higher than among survivors who had sustained similar injuries in motor vehicle crashes. The study, which highlights the need for following survivors after discharge and providing continued care, is published in Annals of Surgery.
“When it comes to the public health problem posed by firearm injury, death is just one piece of the puzzle,” said corresponding author Juan P. Herrera-Escobar, MD, MPH, the research director of Long-Term Outcomes in Trauma in the Center for Surgery and Public Health at the Brigham. “Mortality rates for trauma patients have been dropping significantly over the last 20 years, but this presents a new challenge: What will we do for patients whose lives we save but who continue to suffer from the repercussions of traumatic injury? Our study shows that injury, and especially firearm injury, casts a long shadow over the lives of those who survive.”
As part of the Functional Outcomes and Recovery after Trauma Emergencies (FORTE) project, Herrera-Escobar and colleagues from the Center for Surgery and Public Health surveyed adults who had survived traumatic injury after being treated at one of three level-I trauma centers in Boston between 2015-2018. FORTE is intended to measure long-term outcomes that are meaningful to patients and their families, including functional status, health-related quality of life, treatment adherence, and more.
