Pediatric Injury Patterns Presenting at a Tertiary Care Hospital Emergency Department

Abstract

Introduction: Injuries in the pediatric population relate to significant liability, especially in low- and middle-income countries.¹ The aim of this study is to decipher the patterns of pediatric injury in Pakistan. This may give the data on the pattern of pediatric injuries, thereby strategies could be made to deal such patients and eventually reduce the mortalities and morbidities.

Objective: To evaluate pediatric injury patterns presenting in emergency department of Liaquat National Hospital, Karachi.

Methodology: The study was held at the Emergency department of LNH for six months from 11^th may 2018 to 11^th November 2018. It was a cross sectional study. Ninety children suffering from trauma as per their history were included in this study. Demographics were noted of all the patients enrolled in the study. An approved Performa was used for recording the outcome variables .

Results: - The median age of the children was 4.81±3.12 years. Out of 90 children, 71(79%) were boys and 19(21%) were girls.  Pattern of injury were included road traffic injuries (54.4%),falls from height (31.1%), poisoning (9%) ,burns (3.3%) and electrocution (2.2%)

Conclusion: We conclude that the patterns of pediatric injuries in children presenting in accident and emergency department shows road traffic accidents as the leading cause followed by fall from height, poisoning  and burns. The study emphasizes the need to build an injury surveillance in the emergency dept that would be a building block for a national injury surveillance database. Along with it, study highlights necessary injury prevention measures that would assist in addressing preventable childhood injuries in Pakistan .

Keywords: Pediatric injuries, Road traffic injuries, Poisoning