Prediction of Clinically Important Traumatic Brain Injury in Pediatric Minor Head Trauma; proposing Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury (PTBI) Prognostic Rule

The present study assesses independent predictors of clinically important traumatic brain injury (ciTBI) in order to design a prognostic rule for identification of high risk children with mild head injury.
In a retrospective cross-sectional study, 3,199 children with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) brought to emergency ward of three hospitals in Tehran, Iran were gathered, from April 2014 to April 2016. The associations between probable predictors of ciTBI in children with mild TBI were assessed and a prediction rule for identification of high risk children in need of computed tomography (CT) scan was designed based on a stepwise multivariate logistic regression.
592 (18.5%) children had ciTBI. History of loss of conciseness (odds ratio [OR]=3.0; p The present study showed that a few of children with mild TBI have ciTBI. Therefore, CT scans are not necessary in all of these children. Using PTBI prognostic rule can reduce the number of unnecessary CT scans.