An examination of traffic-related traumatic injuries among children at a Level-1 Pediatric Trauma Center, 2005-2014

BACKGROUND: Traffic-related injuries are the leading fatal injury among children in the US, but no published study compares the different types of traffic-related pediatric injuries to date. Thus, this study aims to examine the10 year trend of traffic-related injury among children at a pediatric hospital and to assess if there were differences in injury mechanism. METHODS: All data were drawn from a Level-1 Pediatric Trauma center in North Texas 2005-2014. Demographic characteristics, length of hospitalization (LOS) and patient type were included. Severity of injury outcome was assessed by Injury Severity Score (ISS) and fatality. The traffic-related injury mechanism included motor vehicle collision (MVC), motor pedestrian collision (MPC) and motorcycle/moped collision (MMC). Description analyses and multi-nominal logistic regressions were applied to examine the factors associated with the type of motor related injuries adjusting for covariates. All analyses were conducted by STATA 14.0. RESULTS: A total of 3,742 traffic-related pediatric injuries were identified. The mean age was 6.4 years (SD =4.0); the majority of patients were boys (59%) and Hispanic (40%). There was a waving trend of the number of traffic-related injuries over the 10-year period. Compared with MVC, demographic disparities exist with children experiencing an MPC injury. Hispanic and African American children were more likely to have an MPC but less likely to have an MMC injury (Relative Risk/RR=1.6, 95% CI=1.3-1.9; RR=2.0, 95% CI=1.9-2.4 respectively). Children with an MPC injury had a more severe outcome than MVC injury, but no difference was found in fatality. The MCC injuries did not significantly differ from MVC in injury severity. CONCLUSIONS: Although efforts have been made to prevent MVC-related pediatric injuries, the trend of MVCs was stable in the most recent years. The MPC-related injury continues to be a higher likelihood of severe pediatric trauma. Thus, continuing efforts and innovative intervention programs are still needed to prevent traffic-related pediatric injuries. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Epidemiology study, Level III