Identifying Agricultural Injuries Requiring Trauma Care in Florida

Agriculture remains one of the most hazardous industries in the United States, yet nonfatal surveillance remains incomplete. Prior studies have shown that trauma registries can support agricultural injury surveillance, but many approaches rely on text review, state-specific indicators, or coding frameworks that are not easily transferable across systems. In this study, Florida Trauma Registry records from 2016 to 2021 were screened using a reproducible case definition based on International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) external cause of injury codes, registry occupation and industry fields, and the work-related indicator. Agricultural injuries were summarized descriptively and mapped to Occupational Injury and Illness Classification System (OIICS) categories. Injury severity scores (ISS) were modeled using generalized additive models (GAMs). The case definition identified 963 agricultural injuries requiring trauma care, including 17 fatalities. Most injuries were minor, and the leading event categories were contact incidents, falls, slips, and trips, and transportation incidents. Body region was the strongest correlate of severity, with head and abdomen/pelvic contents injuries showing the highest adjusted ISS. These findings suggest that the National Trauma Data Standard (NTDS)-aligned trauma registry fields may support reproducible agricultural injury surveillance when narrative text is unavailable.