Patterns of severe injury in pediatric car crash victims: Crash Injury Research Engineering Network database
Section snippets
Methods
The CIREN methodology has been described and validated in prior studies [5], [7]. The CIREN links crash reconstruction with medical data to provide in-depth assessments of biochemical forces leading to injury. Cohorts of patients are derived from people involved in MVCs who were cared for in 1 of 10 level 1–designated trauma centers (Table 1). Each hospital is part of the CIREN, a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration–sponsored program that investigates MVCs. From 1991 to 2004, all
Results
Four hundred seventeen children in MVCs with 2500 injuries were available to be analyzed (males = 219, females = 198). Mean GCS scores, ISS scores, and percentage of subsequent fatalities within each age group are shown in Table 3. For purposes of data analysis, unrestrained and improperly restrained children were grouped together. Prior analysis demonstrated that children in lateral crashes have increased ISS scores and decreased GCS scores as compared with those involved in frontal crashes.
Discussion
Motor vehicle crashes are the major cause of death and disability in the pediatric population [1]. Consequently, a vast amount of resources has been directed toward prevention and intervention strategies. Child crash test dummies have often been used for this purpose, providing an in vitro model by which to examine crash injury characteristics [4]. However, these models are limited in their ability to account for the wide spectrum of shapes and sizes in the pediatric population. Furthermore, a
Acknowledgment
This work was supported in part by DTNH90-Y-0735 and DTNH22-00-H37202 from the Crash Worthiness Research Division of the National Highway Traffic Safety Division.
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Presented at the 52nd Annual Congress of British Association of Paediatric Surgeons, Dublin, Ireland, July 12-15, 2005.