Investigating moderate to severe paediatric trauma in the Auckland region.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate differences between paediatric patients with moderate to severe trauma admitted from two paediatric ED, with respect to: demographics, patterns of presentation, mechanism of injury, injury severity scores (ISS), interventions and outcome.

METHOD: Retrospective cohort study. Moderate to severe trauma was defined as ISS>9. Paediatric patients admitted to hospital via Starship Children's Emergency or KidzFirst ED, with trauma from 1 May 2003 to 30 April 2004, with ISS>9 were identified using multiple databases. The charts were reviewed and data collected included: demographics, hospital of first presentation, diagnoses, ISS, Paediatric trauma score (PTS), Glasgow coma score (GCS), ventilator hours, length of admission, survival and discharge destination. Descriptive statistics with 95% confidence intervals, Mann-Whitney U-test, chi2-test and Fisher's exact test were used as appropriate.

RESULTS: A total of 393 children with moderate to severe trauma were identified using initial search strategies. Of these, 82 children met the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the study; 42 children were admitted via KidzFirst ED and 40 via Starship Children's ED. There was no statistically significant difference in ISS (P=0.86), PTS (P=0.11), GCS (P=0.62), hours on a ventilator (P=0.28) and length of stay (P=0.87) between children admitted from Starship or KidzFirst ED.

CONCLUSION: This study suggests that there are no differences in the numbers or severity of paediatric trauma patients admitted from the Starship and KidzFirst ED. This indicates triage is to the closest ED despite having a tertiary referral centre for paediatric trauma available in Auckland City.