Understanding the etiology of pediatric pedestrian motor vehicle injuries requires a complete understanding of the distribution of these injuries by severity, body region, and age. A review is presented of injuries to all pediatric pedestrian crash victims that survived to presentation to a pediatric level one trauma center (Children's National Medical Center, Washington, D.C., USA). The data is a retrospective review of the pediatric trauma registry. The data consists of 4,887 injuries in 1,629 patients (ages 0 to 18 years). The overall injury distributions confirmed the findings of earlier studies showing the head and lower limbs to be the most vulnerable body regions. For the head, the rate of soft tissue injuries and severe injuries decreased with increasing age of the pedestrian. For the lower limb, a transition between femur and tibia/fibula injuries occurred as the child matured. This data should help prioritize areas of focus in developing vehicle countermeasures for the pediatric pedestrian population. The aim of the present study is twofold; to categorize the distribution of injuries encountered by pediatric pedestrians hit by motor vehicles and to gain understanding of how pedestrian-motor vehicle injury patterns change throughout childhood. An improved understanding of how these injury patterns vary across age groups should facilitate the development of vehicle countermeasures for both pediatric as well as adult pedestrian safety. For the covering abstract see ITRD E825082.
Samenvatting