Impact of a celebrity death on children's injury-related emergency room visits.
OBJECTIVE
To determine whether a sharp increase in Emergency Room (ER) visits at the Montreal Children's Hospital (MCH) during the week following the death of Natasha Richardson from a skiing-related head injury was a) statistically significant and b) related to media coverage of the event. We postulated that there would be less coverage in the French media and in centres west of Quebec.


METHODS
We compared the number of visits to the MCH ER for 10 weeks beginning March 5 and recorded the number for head-related injuries. These data were also compared with averages for the MCH for the same weeks in the previous 16 years; with visit figures from Hôpital Ste-Justine (HSJ); and with those from 3 other pediatric hospitals in provinces west of Quebec for the same period.


RESULTS
We found a 60% increase in injury visits to the MCH ER compared to the baseline week (p < 0.001) and a 66% difference when compared with the 16-year average. HSJ also recorded a sharp increase during the study week but the rise did not persist. Smaller increases were recorded in the more western children's hospitals. At the MCH nearly half of the visits were for head injuries, but there was no change in the number judged to be severe.


CONCLUSIONS
These data suggest that the media coverage of this celebrity death may have generated anxiety among parents, prompting those who might not otherwise have sought medical care to bring their children to the ER.
Montreal Children's Hospital, Montreal, QC.
Glenn
G
Keays
I B
IB
Pless
D002648:Child; D006259:Craniocerebral Trauma / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005197:Famous Persons; D006801:Humans; D008402:Mass Media; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011792:Quebec / Q000453:epidemiology; D015599:Trauma Severity Indices; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000453:epidemiology*