The Relative Associations of the Paediatric Trauma Score and Revised Trauma Score with the Severity of Childhood Trauma

BACKGROUND: Children are prone to unintentional injuries and various scoring systems have been used to triage these injuries. The aim of this study is to determine the associations between paediatric trauma score (PTS), revised trauma score (RTS) and the length of hospital stay as an indicator of injury severity. METHODS: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar and National Orthopaedic Hospital, Enugu from February 2018 to March 2020. A structured questionnaire was used to collect personal, injury-specific and treatment-specific data. The relationship between PTS, RTS and the length of hospital stay was evaluated using the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). RESULTS: A total of 212 patients were included in the study. Majorities (129, 60%) of the injured children were male and most of the injuries were due to falls from height (54%). The mean PTS was 5.36 ± 1.9, while the mean RTS was 7.10 ± 0.9. The Pearson's product momentum correlation coefficient shows that there was weak but statistically significant correlation between the PTS and the RTS (r = 0.22, P = 0.02). The one-way ANOVA showed a statistically significant decrease in the RTS with increasing duration of hospital admission (F-statistic = 6.654, df = 3, P = 0.000). The PTS showed a less obvious decrease with no trend. CONCLUSION: In this study, the RTS showed an inverse relationship with the length of hospital stay.