ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of current trauma scoring systems in childhood traumas and to compare these scoring systems with each other.

In our study, files of 208 patients (age 7.5±3.7 years) with chest trauma who have been followed in our clinic and data regarding their sex, age, body weight, cause of trauma, type of trauma, other system injuries, length of stay in hospital, death rate and its reasons were collected, and for each patient Pediatric trauma score (PTS), Injury severity score (ISS), New injury severity score (NISS), Revised trauma score (RTS), Trauma and injury severity score were calculated and relations between the scores were evaluated.

174 (83.7%) cases had blunt trauma, 34 (16.3%) cases had penetrant chest trauma. The most commonly observed pathologies were lung contusion (44.2%), hemopneumothorax (20.2%), pneumothorax (18.3%), diaphragm rupture (6.2%) and flail chest (4.8%). ISS and NISS were found to be the best scoring systems to determine mortality (p=0.0002), while RTS was found to be more reliable than PTS in triage.

None of the scoring systems are perfect in thorax traumas. However, we believe that popularization of the use of trauma scoring systems will bring significant advantages to diagnosis and treatment.

Keywords: Pediatric thoracic trauma, pediatric chest trauma, trauma scoring systems, trauma score, triage