They found the most common cause of traumatic death in these children was head injury. The results were reported by Mary Christine Bailey, M.D., of Children's Hospital Boston at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting in Baltimore, Md. on May 1. Bailey and her team analyzed injury data from the National Pediatric Trauma Registry, which includes data on admitted patients submitted to the registry by 80 trauma centers nationwide. According to Bailey, few studies have been done on injury characteristics associated with mortality in this population. Previous studies of mortality in young children have primarily focused on demographic characteristics as predictors of death.
Inflicted injury is five times more likely to result in death than unintentional injury.
Carla DiScala, M.D., from the department of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine, was a co-author of the study. Children's Hospital Boston, is the nation's premier pediatric medical center. More than 100 outpatient specialty clinics are located at Children's. Children's Hospital is the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, home to the world's leading pediatric research enterprise, and the largest provider of health care to the children of Massachusetts.