Open wounds to the head have repeatedly topped the list of injuries reported at ACT emergency departments, trumping sprains and fractures.
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The figures come as data shows head injuries were now the leading cause of death or serious injury resulting from accidents worldwide.
But one of Canberra Hospital's emergency department senior staff specialists, Dr Michael Hall, said the open wound category blurred with others and did not include the most serious head injuries.
"Most of them will represent simple lacerations: kids slipping and whacking their heads on coffee tables is really common presentation, mountain bike crashes, sporting injuries," he said.
"If you look at 'open wound of the head' and 'superficial injury to the head' [categories], they're the same thing - if we were doing research on that we would simply combine the two numbers.
"All of the big, serious wounds are coded as different things, they would be a skull fracture, or an intracranial hemorrhage."
ACT Health reported 2220 people attended a Canberra ED last year due to open head wounds, 58 more than those who presented with any dislocation, sprain or strain of joints and ligaments of the ankle or foot. It was the fifth time in the past seven years the category led the injury list.
Three head injury categories were included in the top 10 list, totalling 4310 injuries last year, slightly below the 4717 injuries in the combined categories for wrist and hand complaints.
Nic Stuart was the ABC correspondent in Bangkok when he had a serious brain injury 25 years ago, and until February was president of the National Brain Injury Association.
He said all head injuries were risky and a recovery could be a long process.
"What may initially appear to have been a 'superficial injury to the head' can later turn out to have a very serious long-term effect," he said.
"The problem is the brain is a soft mass that effectively floats inside the hard casing of the skull, and it will bruise or destroy the surface of the brain where it's collided into the skull.
"What can be just as damaging, however, is that the impact causes other links and connections buried deep inside the brain to tear themselves apart."
ACT Health data, using the mandated International Classification of Disease code, is organised to reflect the symptoms of illness or injury a patient is treated for, rather than the cause, so it was not known what people were doing at the time of injury, or where they occurred, for example on a sporting field or at home, a spokeswoman said.
Mr Stuart, now a Canberra Times columnist, said international figures showing head injury was the top cause of death or serious injury from accidents were presented to the International Brain Injury Association's biennial conference in the The Hague last month.
