Abstract

Traumatic injuries greatly affect children's physical and psychological well-being, affecting their school performance, and often leave children with life-long disabilities. A surveillance system has been pilot tested in the Emergency Department of the Cluj-Napoca Hospital as part of the EU Injury Data Base (IDB). Data collection were conducted according to the common IDB standard established in the Member States. The scope of the project was to identify the frequency and characteristics of childhood injuries with the goal of providing information to support prevention efforts and provide comparable data among Member States. Relying on a database in progress (N=1000), preliminary descriptive results indicate that over one third of injured children treated in the Children Hospital of Cluj-Napoca occur between 0 and 4 years of age. Children in this age group suffer twice as many injuries as in any other age group. As a result, every 6 months in Cluj County, one out of every 100 children younger than 4 years old receives emergency healthcare treatment for an injury. Furthermore, over two thirds of children sustained injuries to the head region, 40% of which affected the brain and/or the skull. These injuries have a strong potential for life-long disability, and increase the risk for future injuries. This pilot data provided a baseline for evidence-based prevention strategies with substantial return on investment; while further investigation is needed the pilot demonstrated that there is capability to collect EU quality level data in Romania.