Epidemiological study of pediatric trauma in a reference hospital in Curitiba

OBJECTIVE: to analyze the prevalence of types of trauma, resulting injuries and managements in children and adolescents between 0 and 17 years old, treated in an Emergency Room in 2019. METHODS: a retrospective cross-sectional descriptive study carried out by collecting data from medical records from January to December of 2019, encompassing pediatric trauma victims, divided according to age groups: infants (0-1 year), preschool children (2-4 years), school children (5-10 years) and adolescents (11-17 years). RESULTS: 3,741 patients records were included in the study. The search for assistance occurred spontaneously in about 70% of the cases and males were the most affected at all ages. In infants and preschoolers, the main mechanism of trauma was fall from heights, corresponding to 57.2% and 34.1%, respectively, whereas in school children and adolescents, the main mechanism was ground-level falls (38%) and sports trauma (22,3%), in this order. The main injuries presented, in general, were traumatic brain injury (28,2%), upper limb contusion (23,2%) and upper limb fractures (16,3%). CONCLUSIONS: the profile of the victims analyzed indicates the male sex as the most affected, with the trauma mechanism being the differential according to age. The most frequent mechanism is falls, more prevalent in infants and preschoolers, and the most common injury is extremity contusion, with the upper limbs being the most affected. In general, the cases were considered of low complexity, with a hospitalization rate of 6%.