Abstract
This study investigated the association between minor chest trauma and the risk of pneumonia among pediatric patients in a Taiwanese health care setting. For this retrospective population-based cohort study, the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database was used to analyze the data of patients with a minor chest injury between 2010 and 2012. Data were analyzed through a multivariate analysis with a multiple Cox regression model. Patients were divided into a chest trauma group (n = 6592) and a non-chest trauma group (n = 882,623). An increased risk of pneumonia was observed in the chest trauma group (hazard ratio = 1.23; 95% confidence interval = 1.02–1.49) compared to the non-chest trauma group. In conclusion, this population-based cohort study demonstrated that pediatric patients with minor chest trauma are at an increased risk of pneumonia. The short-term adverse effects of pneumonia could be severe when a patient suffers from mild chest trauma.
Highlights
Chest trauma is a common complaint for emergency department visits
The Cox proportional-hazard model demonstrated that the patients who had minor chest trauma had a higher risk of subsequent pneumonia (adjusted hazard ratio = 1.23; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.02–1.49; p = 0.034) after adjustment for age, sex, congenital anomalies, epilepsy, asthma, upper respiratory tract infection, atopic dermatitis, allergic rhinitis, and NSAIDs
Our study demonstrated that the pediatric group had a higher risk of pneumonia than the older group following a minor thoracic injury
Summary
Chest trauma is a common complaint for emergency department visits. States [1], chest trauma causes approximately 796,000 emergency department visits annually [2] and caused 18,856 hospitalizations during 2002–2004 in Taiwan [3]. Thoracic trauma may cause laceration to chest wall, ribs, lung, heart, great vessels, and tracheobronchial tree. Traffic accidents are the main causes of mortality and morbidity for children older than one year old with an approximate 5% mortality rate [4,5,7]. Compared to other classes of injury, thoracic injury has been found to have a higher mortality rate of 7.74%, and blunt trauma is the most frequent cause [8].
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