Objective
To study the spectrum of accidental injuries in the Pediatric Emergency Department of a community hospital.
Methods
Setting: Pediatric Emergency Department (ED) of a Community hospital with around 10500 ED visits annually. The hospital conducts DNB Pediatrics, MCEM and BSc Accident & Emergency Technology Courses.
Anzeige
Participants: 784 Children with accidental injuries between 0 and 18 years of age who attended ED in a 10-month period from January 2013 to October 2013. Design: Retrospective observational study.
Tools: The ED records of the study group were analysed retrospectively.
Results
Of a total of 8855 children seen in the ED during the study period, 784 (8.9%) presented with accidental injuries. The age distribution was 48 (6.1%), 345 (44%), 172 (21.93%), 131 (16.71%), 88 (11.2%), in <1 year, 1-5 years, 5-10 years, 10-15 years and 15-18 years age groups respectively. Falls accounted for 492 (62.8%), cut injuries 76 (9.7%), RTA 60 (7.7%), poisoning 48 (6.1%), sports related injuries 39 (4.97%), burns 32 (4.1%), crush injuries 15 (1.91%), foreign body 12 (1.53%), fight with peers 8 (1.02%), child abuse 2 (0.25%).
In 495 (63.1%) males, falls accounted for 307 (62.4% of total), cut injury 56 (73.7%), RTA 37 (61.7%), poisoning 25 (52.1%), sports related injuries 28 (71.8%) burns 18 (56.3%), crush injuries 7 (46.7%), foreign body 7 (58.3%), fight with peers 8 (100%), child abuse 2 (100%).
Anzeige
Majority of accidents occurred in evening hours (290, 36.9%) and at home (457, 58.2%). Of 552 falls and RTAs, 115 (20.8%) and 86 (15.6%) sustained head injury and extremity fracture respectively; 3 (2.6%) and 18 (21%) required immediate surgical intervention and open reduction respectively.
232 (29.6%) cases required hospitalisation. There was one death (a 15-year old girl who fell from terrace). Falls were the major cause of injury irrespective of age and gender.
Limitations
A longer study period could have perhaps yielded a larger spectrum of injuries.
Conclusion
Childhood accidental injuries can cause serious morbidity and mortality. Injuries peaked in the 1-5 years age group with falls being the leading cause of injury. Studying epidemiology of childhood injuries can help formulate effective preventive strategies and increase parental awareness.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.