• The American surgeon · Mar 2013

    Injured adolescents, not just large children: difference in care and outcome between adult and pediatric trauma centers.

    • Kazuhide Matsushima, Eric W Schaefer, Eugene J Won, Pamela A Nichols, and Heidi L Frankel.
    • Division of Trauma, Acute Care and Critical Care Surgery, Department of Surgery, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA. kmatsushima@hmc.psu.edu
    • Am Surg. 2013 Mar 1; 79 (3): 267-73.

    AbstractAdolescent injury victims receive care at adult trauma centers (ATCs) and pediatric trauma centers (PTCs). The purpose of this study was to identify care variations and their impact on the outcome of adolescent trauma patients treated at PTC versus ATC. We queried the Pennsylvania Trauma Systems Foundation database for trauma patients between 13 and 18 years of age from 2005 to 2010. Mortality and hospital complication rates between ATC and PTC were compared in univariable and multivariable analysis. In addition, the differences in the delivery of care were also compared. Of 9033 total patients, 6027 (67%) received care at an ATC. Patients in the ATC group were older (16.7 vs. 14.9 years, P < 0.001) and more severely injured (Injury Severity Score: 14.5 vs. 12.2, P < 0.001). Admission diagnostic computed tomography (CT), emergent laparotomy and craniotomy, blood transfusion, and drug screening were more frequently performed at an ATC. After adjustment for potential confounders in multivariable regression models, treatment at a PTC was significantly associated with fewer CTs for transferred patients (odds ratio [OR], 0.28; P < 0.001) and with less frequent emergent laparotomy for all patients (OR, 0.65; P = 0.007). The ATC group had a significantly higher hospital mortality rate (2.9 vs. 0.9%, P < 0.001) and complication rate (9.7 vs. 4.8%, P < 0.001). However, these outcomes were not significantly different between PTC and ATC in multivariable regression models. In the state of Pennsylvania, there were no significant differences in risk-adjusted outcomes between PTC and ATC despite significant difference in use of CT scanning and emergent laparotomy.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    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..

    hide…