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February 8th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda WEDNESDAY, Feb. 8 (HealthDay News) — Researchers in Florida may
have uncovered a rare positive outcome from the downturn in the local
economy: fewer injuries to workers.
The new study finds that traumatic orthopedic injuries dropped by 16
percent in the city of Tampa as the economy soured — a possible sign that
fewer construction workers were getting injured on the job as that
industry bottomed out.
The findings can’t confirm a connection between the injury rate and the
economy, nor do they prove that construction workers account for the
difference over time. Still, the research is food for thought and may
confirm the trend that surgeons noticed over the past few years, said
study author Dr. Daniel S. Chan, staff orthopedic surgeon at Florida
Orthopedic Institute in Tampa.
“We observed declines in our numbers, and we thought it was the
economy,” he said.
The researchers examined the number of trauma cases treated at the
Florida Orthopedic Institute from 2001-2009. They then checked to see if
they corresponded with factors reflecting the rise and fall of the economy
over that period.
The Tampa area was a hot spot during the last big U.S. housing boom,
and the researchers especially wanted to find out if the decrease in cases
they observed coincided with the subsequent meltdown of the home
construction industry.
Falls are an especially common injury for construction workers, Chan
noted. Among other things, falls on construction sites can fracture
ankles, shinbones and heel bones, he said.
The researchers found that cases of “orthopedic trauma” from the county
did undergo a decline: from 2,065 in 2007 to 1,743 in 2009, a drop of 16
percent. And at the same time, the unemployment rate in the county rose
steeply, from 4 percent to 10.7 percent over that same period.
Construction worker employment, especially, fell steeply — by 36
percent from 2006-2009, the study found, while the number of county
building permits issued dipped by 80 percent from 2005 to 2009.
Overall, the researchers found that the number of trauma cases were
statistically connected to the unemployment rate of the previous year.
That’s possibly because it took a while for construction projects already
in progress to come to an end, Chan said.
The findings could reflect a seemingly paradoxical fact about hard
economic times, Chan said: In some cases, the health of people actually
improves because they take less risks (including on-the-job risks) and
take better care of themselves.
Still, Dr. Wilford K. Gibson, an orthopedic surgeon with Atlantic
Orthopaedic Specialists in Virginia Beach, Va., said he’s hesitant “to
draw a correlation to decreased employment and cast stones at the
construction industry.”
Whatever its cause, is the decline in trauma cases bad for business in
the world of orthopedic surgery? “Fortunately, I’m in an area that will
always have some need,” Chan said. “It’s hard to imagine that people will
be accident-free.”
Still, he said, “let’s hope the economy turns around.”
The study was scheduled to be released this week at the American
Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ annual meeting in San Francisco.
Findings presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until
published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information
For details about ankle and hip injuries, try the U.S. National Library of
Medicine.
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