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Abstract
Background/purpose Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. The objective of this study was to describe temporal trends of paediatric traumatic injury over an 11-year period by mechanism of injury (MOI), age, sex, race and ethnicity, injury severity and hospital discharge disposition.
Methods The National Trauma Data Bank was queried to identify paediatric patients (1–17 years old) injured from 2012 to 2022. Two-sided non-parametric Mann-Kendall trend tests were used to evaluate temporal trends of MOI for all patients and within demographic groups.
Results/outcomes Over the 11-year period, 1 092 308 injury records met study inclusion criteria and had complete demographic and MOI data. Across all patients, there was a significant increase in bites and stings, cut/pierce injuries and firearm injuries, whereas there were decreasing trends in pedestrian and other blunt injuries over time. There was a significant increase in injury over time for Black, Hispanic or Latino, and Pacific Islander patients and those 5–9 years old. The MOIs with the highest injury severity and in-hospital mortality were firearm, pedestrian and motor vehicle transportation occupant injuries.
Conclusions Though a few MOIs increased for all paediatric patients in the study period, disparities persist for several specific populations. As such, injury prevention strategies should be tailored based on age, sex and race or ethnicity, and relevant education and resources should be provided to both children and their adult guardians. Future research should consider additional socioeconomic and community-based characteristics.
- Longitudinal
- Child
- Injury Diagnosis
- Trauma Systems
Data availability statement
Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. All data used were obtained from the National Trauma Data Bank. Requests for data use may be sent to the American College of Surgeons who manage the data repository.
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Data availability statement
Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. All data used were obtained from the National Trauma Data Bank. Requests for data use may be sent to the American College of Surgeons who manage the data repository.
Footnotes
Contributors CT conceptualised the study and acquired and analysed the data. CT, KJK and KF-O’B contributed to the analysis design and created the first draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and revised the manuscript. All authors approved the submitted version. CT is the guarantor.
Funding The project was funded by the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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