(Press-News.org) (SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- This week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine features an article that highlights an unprecedented analysis of the nation's childhood head injuries. The study, authored by physicians at UC Davis School of Medicine and Washington University School of Medicine, analyzed more than 43,000 children who were evaluated for head trauma at 25 emergency departments around the United States. In the accompanying supplements, detailed information about these children, their presentations and results will be useful to doctors and helpful to policy makers seeking potential priorities for public-health interventions such as new guidance on the use of bicycle helmets and automobile safety-seat restraints.
"From an enormous nationwide study of head-injured children, we have distilled a wide range of important features of epidemiology, mechanisms, diagnoses and treatments regarding the full spectrum of blunt head trauma in children," said Kimberly Quayle, professor of pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis and medical director of emergency services at St. Louis Children's Hospital. "The findings may be useful in developing injury-prevention measures, such as bike-helmet campaigns, as well as helping guide physicians to make better decisions based on strong evidence."
With traumatic brain injury being the leading cause of death and disability in children older than 1 year of age, gathering data from hospitals around the country offered helpful insights to the researchers, including how the injuries occurred, the severity of the injuries based on the mechanisms of injury and age group, radiological findings, and neurosurgical interventions performed.
"The detailed information from this very large prospective study is not available from any other source," said Nathan Kuppermann, professor and chair of emergency medicine at UC Davis who was the lead investigator of the study and senior author of the research letter. "It is a gold mine of information, providing the detailed description of the full breadth of pediatric head injuries."
The data indicate that falls were the most frequent cause of injury in children younger than 12, while older children more often had head injuries due to assaults, sports activities and motor-vehicle crashes. Among those involved in car crashes, only two-thirds were wearing seat belts. The researchers also found that among children who came to the emergency department suffering head injuries from bicycle collisions, fewer than 20 percent were wearing bicycle helmets.
The data were compiled in 25 emergency departments across the country in a prospective, observational study conducted through the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) from 2004 through 2006. The study was designed to derive and validate a "prediction rule" or algorithm for predicting clinically important traumatic brain injury in children with minor head trauma. The rule helps physicians in emergency departments assess whether a child presenting with head trauma is likely to have an injury that requires surgical intervention and CT scanning. CT scans carry a small but a non-negligible risk of cancer; the rule is designed to help in decision making and to avoid unnecessary scans.
The research letter, titled "Epidemiology of blunt head trauma in children in U.S. emergency departments," provides information about the full breadth of head injury severity in children. It also provides data of interest to radiologists and neurosurgeons, with detailed information on CT findings and needed surgical interventions according to age as well as mental status when the pediatric patients presented to the emergency department.
INFORMATION:
The original study from which these data were compiled was titled, "Identification of children at very low risk of clinically-important brain injuries after head trauma: a prospective cohort study," and was published in the Lancet in 2009. Kuppermann was the principal investigator and lead author of the study.
In addition to Kuppermann and Quayle, James Holmes, a professor and specialist in emergency medicine at UC Davis, also co-authored the research letter, which appears in the November 13, 2014 issue of the journal.
Their work was supported by grants from the Health Resources and Services Administration/ Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Division of Research, Training and Education and the Emergency Medical Services of Children Program.
The UC Davis School of Medicine is among the nation's leading medical schools, recognized for its research and primary-care programs. The school offers fully accredited master's degree programs in public health and in informatics, and its combined M.D.-Ph.D. program is training the next generation of physician-scientists to conduct high-impact research and translate discoveries into better clinical care. Along with being a recognized leader in medical research, the school is committed to serving underserved communities and advancing rural health. For more information, visit UC Davis School of Medicine at http://medschool.ucdavis.edu.
BOSTON, MA - Sleep disorders are independent risk factors for heart attacks and motor vehicle crashes, which are the two leading causes of death for firefighters in the United States. In a national sample of almost 7,000 firefighters, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) examined the prevalence of common sleep disorders and their association with adverse health and safety outcomes and found that sleep disorders are highly prevalent, and associated with substantially increased risk of motor vehicle crashes and cardio-metabolic diseases among firefighters.
Findings ...
VIDEO:
NC State researchers have developed a new way to transfer thin semiconductor films, which are only one atom thick, onto arbitrary substrates, paving the way for flexible computing or photonic...
Click here for more information.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new way to transfer thin semiconductor films, which are only one atom thick, onto arbitrary substrates, paving the way for flexible computing or photonic devices. The technique ...
COLUMBUS, Ohio - In six out of 10 cases, ovarian cancer is diagnosed when the disease is advanced and five-year survival is only 27 percent. A new study suggests that a cancer-killing virus combined with a chemotherapy drug might safely and effectively treat advanced or recurrent forms of the disease.
Researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James), led the cell and animal study. Reporting in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, the researchers showed that ...
Some people experience cold not only as feeling cold, but actually as a painful sensation. This applies even to fairly mild temperatures - anything below 20°C. A group of researchers from Lund University in Sweden have now identified the mechanism in the body that creates this connection between cold and pain. It turns out that it is the same receptor that reacts to the pungent substances in mustard and garlic.
Professor of Pharmacology Peter Zygmunt and Professor of Clinical Pharmacology Edward Högestätt have long conducted research on pain and the connection ...
For several years the Danish health service has been moving towards increased centralisation and specialisation in large hospital departments based on the thesis that this provides better results for patients. A new study involving more than 12,000 Danish patients with hip fractures presents a different picture, however:
"Our study shows that the mortality rate for this group of patients is lower in the smaller hospital departments compared to the larger departments. We can also see that the length of stay in hospital is shorter and the quality of care is generally better, ...
Stanford, CA--Photosynthesis is the process by which plants convert energy from the sunlight into chemical energy in the form of sugars. These sugars are used by plants to grow and function, as well as food for animals and humans that eat them.
Plants grow in environments where the availability of light fluctuates quickly and drastically, for example from the shade of clouds passing overhead or of leaves on overhanging trees blowing in the wind. Plants thus have to rapidly adjust photosynthesis to maximize energy capture while preventing excess energy from causing damage. ...
Researchers from Denmark and the U.S. report that babies of women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or pre-clinical RA--the period prior to symptoms--are 1.5 times more likely to be born prematurely in Denmark. Findings published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), indicate that body measurements of the baby at birth were only slightly lower in children exposed to maternal or preclinical RA compared to those with no exposure to the disease. Paternal RA was not found to impact fetal growth or preterm birth risk.
Roughly one ...
SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 13, 2014 - A University of Utah study of two African tribes found evidence that men evolved better navigation ability than women because men with better spatial skills - the ability to mentally manipulate objects - can roam farther and have children with more mates.
By testing and interviewing dozens of members of the Twe and Tjimba tribes in northwest Namibia, the anthropologists showed that men who did better on a spatial task not only traveled farther than other men but also had children with more women, according to the study published this week ...
New research indicates that the embryos of women who are overweight or obese at the time they conceive display distinct differences in early development compared to embryos from women of a healthy weight.
The results of the study, published today in the journal Human Reproduction, provide strong evidence for a direct link between what mothers eat and the ability of their fertilised eggs to divide and grow. The researchers claim this could potentially have long-term health implications for any children born from these embryos.
The four key findings of the study, which ...
Just as soldiers on sentry duty constantly adjust their behaviour to match the current threat level, dwarf mongoose sentinels exhibit flexible decision-making in relation to predation risk, new research from the University of Bristol has shown.
Biologists Julie Kern and Dr Andy Radford found that decisions about when to go on duty, what position to adopt and how long to remain on post were all affected by information about the likelihood of danger. Sentinels altered their behaviour depending on both environmental conditions, such as wind speed and social signals, such ...
