Derivation of the children's head injury algorithm for the prediction of important clinical events decision rule for head injury in children.

ABSTRACT:

Background

A quarter of all patients presenting to emergency departments are children. Although there are several large, well-conducted studies on adults enabling accurate selection of patients with head injury at high risk for computed tomography scanning, no such study has derived a rule for children.

Aim

To conduct a prospective multicentre diagnostic cohort study to provide a rule for selection of high-risk children with head injury for computed tomography scanning.

Design

All children presenting to the emergency departments of 10 hospitals in the northwest of England with any severity of head injury were recruited. A tailor-made proforma was used to collect data on around 40 clinical variables for each child. These variables were defined from a literature review,

SUBMITTER: Dunning J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2082967 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature