Choking and suffocation

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When a person’s air supply is partly or fully blocked, they are at risk of injury and death from choking or suffocation. This can occur when breathing is disrupted by a physical blockage, such as an object in the windpipe, or when a person is trapped in a low oxygen environment.

Choking and suffocation injuries resulted in:

This represents 9% of injury deaths and 0.3% of injury hospitalisations.

Choking on objects is the most common cause of death in this category, while a foreign body in respiratory tract is the most common cause of hospitalised injury.

Older people have the highest rates of death by choking and suffocation, while young children have the highest rates of hospitalisation.

This report summarises data on unintentional choking and suffocation only. Intentional injuries are included under Self-harm injuries and suicide or Assault and homicide.

This cause category is also referred to as other accidental threats to breathing and is separate from drowning and submersion.

Causes of choking and suffocation

Inhalation or ingestion of an object other than food caused 77% of the deaths in this category in 2020–21 as well as 23% of the hospitalisations in 2021–22. A foreign body causing respiratory tract injury caused a further 38% of the hospitalisations. (Tables 1b and 1a).

Notes

1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.
3. Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10-AM (11th edition) external cause codes (ACCD 2019).

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Notes

1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.
3. Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10-AM (11th edition) external cause codes (ACCD 2019).

Source: AIHW National Mortality Database.

For more detail, see Data tables B5-6 and E7-9.

Trends over time

Over the period from 2017–18 to 2021–22, the age-standardised rate of hospitalisations due to choking and suffocation declined by an annual average of 0.9%. From 2012–13 to 2016–17 there was an average annual increase of 1.6%.

There is a break in the time series for hospitalisations between 2016–17 and 2017–18, due to a change in data collection methods (see the technical notes for details).

For deaths due to choking and suffocation between 2011–12 and 2020–21 there was an average annual decrease in rate of 0.7% (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Choking and suffocation hospitalisations and deaths, by sex and year

 For more detail, see Data tables C1–3 and F1–4.

Seasonal differences

Patterns of hospitalisation due to choking and suffocation remain similar across seasons (Figure 2).

Some other causes of injury show seasonal differences – see the interactive display. 

Figure 2: Seasonal differences in hospitalisations due to choking and suffocation, 2019–20 to 2021–22

Notes

1. Admission counts have been standardised into two 15-day periods per month.
2. A scale up factor has been applied to June admissions to account for cases not yet separated.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables C1–3 and F1–4.

Age and sex differences

Rates of death due to choking and suffocation were highest for people aged 65 and over, while children aged 0 to 4 had the highest rates of hospitalisation compared with other life-stage age groups.

Of the hospitalisations in 2021–22:

• 33% were for people aged 65 and over
• 23% were for children aged 0–4.

Males were 1.3 times as likely as females to be hospitalised for choking or suffocation in 2021–22.

Of the deaths in 2020–21, 81% were for people aged 65 and over (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Choking and suffocation hospitalisations and deaths, by age group and sex

For more detail, see Data tables A1-2 and D1–2.

Severity

There are many ways that the severity, or seriousness, of an injury can be measured. Some of the ways to measure the severity of hospitalised injuries are:

• number of days in hospital
• time in an intensive care unit (ICU)
• time on a ventilator
• in-hospital deaths.

Compared to all injury hospitalisations in 2021–22, for choking and suffocation:

• the average duration of a hospital stay was less than half as long
• the percentage of cases that included time in an ICU was about twice as high
• the percentage of cases that involved continuous ventilatory support was about 3 times as high (Table 2)
• the rate of in-hospital deaths was almost 4 times as high.

Note: Average number of days in hospital (length of stay) includes admissions that are transfers from 1 hospital to another or transfers from 1 admitted care type to another within the same hospital, except where care involves rehabilitation procedures.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables A12–13.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

There were 59 hospitalisations in 2021–22 and 30 deaths in 2020–21 due to choking and suffocation among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

For more detail, see Data tables A1–3 and D4–9.

Remoteness

In 2021–22, people living in Outer regional areas had higher age-standardised rates of hospitalisation due to choking and suffocation than people living in less remote areas (Table 3).

n.p. not published because of small numbers, confidentiality, or other concerns about the quality of the data.
Note: Rates are age-standardised per 100,000 population.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

n.p. not published because of small numbers, confidentiality, or other concerns about the quality of the data.
Note: Rates are age-standardised per 100,000 population.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables A7–A9 and D9–10.

For information on how the statistics were calculated by remoteness, see the technical notes.

Data details

Technical notes: how the data were calculated

Data tables: download full data tables

Glossary

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