Eur J Pediatr (2011) 170:65–73 DOI 10.1007/s00431-010-1271-y ORIGINAL PAPER The long-term outcome after severe trauma of children in Flanders (Belgium): a population-based cohort study using the International Classification of Functioning—related outcome score Patrick Van de Voorde & Marc Sabbe & Roula Tsonaka & Dimitris Rizopoulos & Paul Calle & Annick De Jaeger & Emmanuel Lesaffre & Dirk Matthys & on behalf of the PENTA Study Group Received: 6 May 2010 / Accepted: 25 July 2010 / Published online: 10 August 2010 # The Author(s) 2010. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Important long-term health problems have been described after severe paediatric trauma. The International Classification of Functioning (ICF) was developed as a universal framework to describe that health. We evaluated outcome in children after ‘severe’ trauma (defined as: hospitalised >48 h) by means of a questionnaire based on this ICF construct (IROS). Questionnaires were sent to children; one year after this trauma and to ‘control’ children without any previous ‘severe’ trauma. We created propen- sity score-matched pairs (n = 133) and evaluated differences in health perception. IROS characteristics were investigated by means of Item Response Theory models. We then estimated the health state of each individual based on his/ her response pattern (factor score z01) and investigated the effect of selected covariates with simple linear regression. Significant odds ratios for differences between matched groups (p < 0.05) were observed for among others emotional problems, mobility, societal life and family burden, but not for chronic pain. Children in the trauma group showed, e.g. significant more physician (estimated relative risk R′ 1.7) Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00431-010-1271-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. P. Van de Voorde (*) : A. De Jaeger : D. Matthys Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, University Hospital Ghent, 1K12IC, De Pintelaan 185, 9000 Ghent, Belgium e-mail: patrick.vandevoorde@ugent.be A. De Jaeger e-mail: annick.dejaeger@ugent.be D. Matthys e-mail: dirk.matthys@ugent.be M. Sabbe Emergency Medicine, University Hospital Leuven, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: marc.sabbe@uz.kuleuven.ac.be E. Lesaffre Interuniversity Institute for Biostatistics, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: e.lesaffre@erasmusmc.nl R. Tsonaka Department of Medical Statistics and Bioinformatics, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands e-mail: S.Tsonaka@lumc.nl D. Rizopoulos : E. Lesaffre Department of Biostatistics, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands D. Rizopoulos e-mail: d.rizopoulos@erasmusmc.nl P. Van de Voorde : P. Calle Emergency Medicine, University Hospital Ghent, Ghent, Belgium P. Calle e-mail: Paul.Calle@ugent.be