Abstract
This research explored whether the pediatric version of the Canadian Triage Acuity Scale (PaedsCTAS) represented a valid alternative indicator for surveillance of injury severity. Every patient presenting in a Canadian emergency department is assigned a CTAS or PaedsCTAS score in order to prioritize access to care and to predict the nature and scope of care that is likely to be required. The five-level PaedsCTAS score ranges from I (resuscitation) to V (non-urgent). A total of 256 children, 0 to 17-years-old, who attended a pediatric hospital for an injury were followed longitudinally. Of these children, 32.4% (n = 83) were hospitalized and 67.6% (n = 173) were treated in the emergency department and released. They completed the PedsQLTM, a validated measure of health related quality of life, at baseline (pre-injury status), one-month, four- to six-months, and 12-months post-injury. In this secondary data analysis, PaedsCTAS was found to be significantly associated with hospitalization and length of stay, sensitive to the differences between PaedsCTAS II and III, and related to physical but not psychosocial HRQoL. The findings suggest that PaedsCTAS may be a useful proxy measure of injury severity to supplement or replace hospitalization status and/or length of stay, currently proxy measures.
Highlights
As the leading cause of mortality and one of the leading causes of morbidity in the United States and Canada, childhood injury is a significant public health issue [1,2]
Changes were made to how hospital electronic records were kept during the beginning of study, so PaedsCTAS score were only available after this change
Hospitalization and length of stay are routinely used as proxy measures of injury, but there are a number of issues with using these measures
Summary
As the leading cause of mortality and one of the leading causes of morbidity in the United States and Canada, childhood injury is a significant public health issue [1,2]. Measures of injury severity are useful to health professionals and researchers in order to track and better understand injuries and work towards preventing them. General measures are readily available through hospital databases, but are not injury specific, and there are questions about how well they predict injury severity [4]. Injury specific measure are more accurate, but they are complex and time consuming to calculate so are not routinely calculated [4]. An accessible and relatively accurate measure of injury severity, that does not require additional calculation, would be of benefit
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