Injury prevention: an international perspective.

P Barss, GS Smith, SP Barker, D Mohan. (390 pages, £42.50.) Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-511982-7. These books produce an acute awareness in the reader that both intentional and unintentional injury are not ‘assaults’ or ‘accidents’ but phenomena with many similarities to infection. The aetiological agent for injury is energy which has a ‘vehicle’ (motor car or firearm) analogous to the carrier or vector of infection. There are also predisposing and protective factors in the ‘victim’ (host) and environment. Both books require the reader to change how he/she thinks about trauma. Injury does not ‘just happen’, but is amenable to study, understanding and intervention. The intentions of Barss et al. are ambitious. They aim to provide a resource for worldwide “injury prevention and control” and to promote an awareness that “most injuries … really are avoidable”. The authors start with an overview of this subject and continue by reviewing the epidemiological methods available for study of injury. Successive chapters discuss measurement of mortality, morbidity, the cost of injuries and risk factors for and the determinants of injury. They then proceed to an overview of the major subtypes of injury (traffic, unintentional, occupational and intentional injury, and disasters) and finish with a discussion of how the effects of injury may be ameliorated through prevention and treatment. The book is lucidly written, clearly presented with excellent sign posting and identification of subsections, includes some case studies and is enlivened by appropriate quotations.