Pre hospital intensive care in multiple trauma children.

ABSTRACT

From January 1979 to December 1984, 1,272 calls, concerning injured children, aged 11 days to 15 years, justified the intervention of a Mobile Medical Emergency and Intensive Care Service, in the department of "Val-de-Marne" near Paris. Three hundred and twenty-two were very serious trauma children (25%); 45 were in cardiac arrest, and 41 died on the scene of the accident despite the intensive cares delivered by the anesthetists or pediatricians. Two hundred and eighty-one children were hospitalized in an intensive multiple trauma pediatric unit (97 cases) or in a neurosurgical pediatric unit (184 cases). The mode of accident was traffic accident (252), fall (48), fire arms (4), knife wounds (7), hanging or strangulation (9), others (2). They concerned 119 females and 203 males. 126 were multiple trauma children (40%). 37% of these accidents happened between May and July, and 40% occurred between 3 to 6 p.m. The 322 children immediately received medical care but 26% died during their hospitalization (17% in the first 24 hours). Thus mortality rate is 35% (114 cases).