Faculty Collaboration Database

Potential Impact of a Validated Screening Tool for Pediatric Abusive Head Trauma. J Pediatr 2015 Dec;167(6):1375-81.e1

Date

10/20/2015

Pubmed ID

26477871

DOI

10.1016/j.jpeds.2015.09.018

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-84962088781 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   19 Citations

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a retrospective, theoretical comparison of actual pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) screening for abusive head trauma (AHT) vs AHT screening guided by a previously validated 4-variable clinical prediction rule (CPR) in datasets used by the Pediatric Brain Injury Research Network to derive and validate the CPR.

STUDY DESIGN: We calculated CPR-based estimates of abuse probability for all 500 patients in the datasets. Next, we demonstrated a positive and very strong correlation between these estimates of abuse probability and the overall diagnostic yields of our patients' completed skeletal surveys and retinal examinations. Having demonstrated this correlation, we applied mean estimates of abuse probability to predict additional, positive abuse evaluations among patients lacking skeletal survey and/or retinal examination. Finally, we used these predictions of additional, positive abuse evaluations to extrapolate and compare AHT detection (and 2 other measures of AHT screening accuracy) in actual PICU screening for AHT vs AHT screening guided by the CPR.

RESULTS: Our results suggest that AHT screening guided by the CPR could theoretically increase AHT detection in PICU settings from 87%-96% (P < .001), and increase the overall diagnostic yield of completed abuse evaluations from 49%-56% (P = .058), while targeting slightly fewer, though not significantly less, children for abuse evaluation.

CONCLUSIONS: Applied accurately and consistently, the recently validated, 4-variable CPR could theoretically improve the accuracy of AHT screening in PICU settings.

Author List

Hymel KP, Herman BE, Narang SK, Graf JM, Frazier TN, Stoiko M, Christie LM, Harper NS, Carroll CL, Boos SC, Dias M, Pullin DA, Wang M, Pediatric Brain Injury Research Network (PediBIRN) Investigators, Pediatric Brain Injury Research Network PediBIRN Investigators

Author

Sandeep K. Narang MD, JD Chief, Professor in the Pediatrics department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Child
Child Abuse
Craniocerebral Trauma
Decision Support Techniques
Female
Humans
Infant
Intensive Care Units, Pediatric
Male
Reproducibility of Results
Retrospective Studies
Trauma Severity Indices