• Stacy A Drake, John B Holcomb, Yijiong Yang, Caitlin Thetford, Lauren Myers, Morgan Brock, Dwayne A Wolf, David Persse, Bindi J Naik-Mathuria, Charles E Wade, and Matthew T Harting.
• Texas A&M University, Houston, TX, USA. sadrake@tamu.edu.
• Pediatr. Surg. Int. 2020 Feb 1; 36 (2): 179-189.

PurposeAlthough trauma is the leading cause of death for the pediatric population, few studies have addressed the preventable/potentially preventable death rate (PPPDR) attributable to trauma.MethodsThis is a retrospective study of trauma-related death records occurring in Harris County, Texas in 2014. Descriptive and Chi-squared tests were conducted for two groups, pediatric and adult trauma deaths in relation to demographic characteristics, mechanism of injury, death location and survival time.ResultsThere were 105 pediatric (age < 18 years) and 1738 adult patients. The PPPDR for the pediatric group was 21.0%, whereas the PPPDR for the adult group was 37.2% (p = 0.001). Analysis showed fewer preventable/potentially preventable (P/PP) deaths resulting from any blunt trauma mechanism in the pediatric population than in the adult population (19.6% vs. 48.4%, p < 0.001). Amongst the pediatric population, P/PP traumatic brain injury (TBI) were more common in the youngest age range (age 0-5) vs. the older (6-12 years) pediatric and adolescent (13-17 years) patients.ConclusionOur results identify areas of opportunities for improving pediatric trauma care. Although the overall P/PP death rate is lower in the pediatric population than the adult, opportunities for improving initial acute care, particularly TBI, exist.

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