Clinical Predictors of Severe Head Trauma in Children

Computed Tomography Scans in Children With Hemophilia After Minor Head Trauma

“…Witmer et al 8 demonstrated using hypothetical questionnaires that physicians' self-reported management of pediatric patients with hemophilia and asymptomatic mild head trauma involved common use of HCT imaging. However, our findings of a high rate of HCT use with a low incidence of ICH in children with minor head injury was also observed in other studies including Hennes et al 9 who demonstrated that all 17 patients with 24 episodes of moderate or minor head trauma had normal HCT readings. Dietrich et al 10 reported similar results that included ICH evident on 5 patients (4.5%) of 66 HCT scans performed on hemophilia patients with head trauma.…”

A decision rule for identifying children at low risk for brain injuries after blunt head trauma

“…Identification of a reliable set of clinical predictors of traumatic brain injury in children with head trauma has been the goal of previous studies; however, the results have been inconclusive. 7,[9][10][11][12][13][14] Previous investigations have identified several signs and symptoms associated with traumatic brain injury in children 7,[9][10][11][12][13][14][44][45][46] similar to those identified in the univariable analyses of the current study. None of these previous studies, however, derived a decision rule that identified all children with traumatic brain injury.…”

The predictive significance of presenting symptoms, signs and radiography in paediatric head injuries

“…Motor deficits (such as hemipareses or posturing) and other neurological signs were found not to be useful predictors of any complication or intervention, in contrast to the views of other authors 12,28,30 . Seizures were also found not to be associated with any dependent variable.…”