title: Head Injury in Children: Has a Change in Circumstances Caused an Increase in Treatment Numbers?
abstract: The number of hospitalizations for head injuries in children is rising. The exact causes remain unclear. We analyzed data of children aged between 0 and 18 years who sustained a head injury between 2010 and 2011. The analysis focused on data related to demographics, trauma mechanism, clinical course, results of imaging scans, concomitant injuries, and outcome. A total of 794 inpatient cases of head injury were treated. The leading mechanism of injury was a fall (at home) primarily at the age of 1 to 4 years (46.5%), with the majority of the children sustaining a mild brain injury (764, 96.2%). Neurosurgery was performed in 21 (2.64%) cases; average hospital stay was 2.9 days (range: 0-68 days). This study is not able to confirm that children are increasingly being brought to the hospital by their parents because of new trauma mechanisms or parents' uncertainty, nor can we confirm that the number of nonaccidental injuries is rising.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Andrej
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pal'a
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatric Surgery, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Melanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kapapa
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Carsten
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Posovszky
authors.affiliation: Department of Traumatology and Plastic Surgery, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Götz
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Röderer
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Ralph
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: König
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, Hospital Landshut, Landshut, Germany.
authors.forename: Dieter
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Woischneck
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian Rainer
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Wirtz
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany Thomas.Kapapa@uniklinik-ulm.de.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kapapa
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D017677:Age Distribution; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006259:Craniocerebral Trauma / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D015600:Glasgow Coma Scale; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D009493:Neurosurgery / Q000379:methods*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D017678:Sex Distribution; D013997:Time Factors; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed; D016896:Treatment Outcome
keywords: computed tomography; concomitant injuries; magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); mechanism of injury; traumatic brain injury