Investigation of Causes, Time Indices, and Results of Pediatric Pre-hospital Emergency Missions in Emergency Medical Centers Affiliated to Dezful University of Medical Sciences, 2011-2012

One of the most stressful missions for the emergency medical service personnel is being encountered with injured infants and children. This study aimed to survey the causes and time and place indices of pediatric pre–hospital emergency.
In this cross-sectional study, the histories of all pediatric pre-hospital emergency missions performed for below 15 year old children from March 2011 to September 2012 were extracted from their records. Then, the demographic data, types of accidents, causes of accidents, time indices, and the missions results were recorded in the standard pre-hospital emergency questionnaire. The data were then entered into the SPSS statistical software and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.
Among the 10121 records, 594 missions were related to pediatric pre-hospital accidents, 74.6% of which being related to boys. The most common reasons for calling emergency centers were damages caused by accidents, diseases, and falls. Besides, epilepsy was the most frequent cause of diseases. The results revealed a significant correlation between accidents and age (P=0.04) and sex (P=0.03). Moreover, the mean time of getting to the patients and transferring them to hospitals was 5.53 and 14.1 minutes, respectively.
This study indicated that accidents were the most common causes of pediatric medical emergency missions. However, the results of this study were not consistent with those of other researches. Thus, these findings can be used for further planning for better service provision.