Clinical and Imaging Consequences in Pediatric Head Trauma

Abstract

Objective:Cases of childhood head trauma constitute a common patient group in emergency departments and computed tomography (CT) is a frequently preferred imaging method for these cases. We aimed to retrospectively evaluate the cranial tomography results of pediatric patients, along with their admission clinics, hospitalization, and survival status.Method:Four-hundred pediatric patients admitted to the emergency department with head trauma between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2020 were included in this retrospective cross-sectional study. Demographic characteristics, trauma patterns, symptoms, clinical findings, CT findings, hospitalization, consultation, and survival status of the patients were recorded and evaluated.Results:The mean age of evaluated patients was 6.87±4.96 (range 0-17) years. Among the 400 cases in the study, the most common type of trauma was falling in 260 (65%) cases, the most common symptom was headache in 99 (24.8%) cases, and 264 (66%) patients had CT imaging. Although 137 (34.3%) of all patients had no complaints, they had CT imaging. Although 56 (14%) of all patients did not have any complaints, there was a lesion in their tomography. While 288 patients had no CT lesions, the most common CT findings included 80 (20%) cephalohematomas and 21 (5.3%) fractures, respectively. The relationship of clinical symptoms with both the presence of radiological imaging and the presence of a lesion on CT was significant (p=0.001). Four (1%) patients were in the exitus group.Conclusion:Tomography imaging is a very important examination in pediatric patients with head trauma and is directly related to symptoms, clinic, and mortality. There is a requirement for multicenter prospective studies on this subject to establish realistic and reliable algorithms for cranial CT preference in patients.

Keywords

• child
• emergency department
• head trauma
• tomography