-
Pediatric emergency care · Nov 2024
The Impact of COVID-19 on Patterns of Fractures Presenting to Pediatric Emergency Departments.
- Stephanie M Ruest, Holly R Hanson, Andrew Kiragu, Lois K Lee, Mark R Zonfrillo, and Wendy J Pomerantz.
- From the Departments of Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital and the Rhode Island Injury Prevention Center, Providence, RI.
- Pediatr Emerg Care. 2024 Nov 6.
ObjectiveTo examine differences in pediatric fracture prevalence, severity, and mechanisms of injury before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsThis is a subanalysis of data from a multicenter, cross-sectional study of all injury-related visits to 40 urban pediatric emergency departments (EDs) for children younger than 18 years occurring January 2019-December 2020. ED visits for injuries including fractures were identified by International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision codes. Comparative analyses of patient demographics, fracture prevalence, severity, and mechanisms of injury for March 17, 2019, to December 31, 2019 (pre-COVID), versus March 15, 2020, to December 31, 2020 (during COVID), were performed.ResultsFracture-related visits comprised 21.0% (n = 123,684) of all injury visits (n = 589,083) during the study period. There were 16,190 fewer fracture-related visits (-23.2%) in 2020 than 2019. There were differences in the proportion of fracture-related visits by age (P < 0.0001), with increases in children younger than 5 years and decreases in children 5 to 18 years old. There were higher proportions of visits in 2020 among female patients, White children, non-Hispanic children, and those with private insurance (P < 0.0001, respectively). Patients with fractures in 2020 were more severely injured, with higher proportions of hospitalizations (P < 0.0001), intensive care unit admissions (P < 0.0001), deaths (P = 0.007), and higher injury severity scores (P < 0.0001). Fracture mechanisms shifted to more motor vehicle crashes, bicycles, and firearms in 2020 (P < 0.0001).ConclusionsDespite a decrease in fracture-related visits to urban pediatric EDs during the early COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increase in the proportion of ED visits for children younger than 5 years and higher severity injuries. These findings highlight injury epidemiology pattern shifts that occurred during the pandemic. Identifying higher-risk populations for fracture may help guide targeted education and prevention efforts.Copyright © 2024 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*
,_underline_
or**bold**
. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>
and subscript<sub>text</sub>
. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3.
, hyphens-
or asterisks*
. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
- Images can be included with:
![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
- For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)
inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]
to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote.
.