Child's nervous system : ChNS : official journal of the International Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery
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Multicenter Study
International Multicenter Study of Head Injury in Children. ISHIP Group.
With the object of evaluating different epidemiological factors in the acute phase of head injury (HI) in the pediatric age group in five countries (Argentina, Brazil, France, Hong-Kong and Spain), we carried out a prospective and descriptive study, in which we analyzed the clinical and radiological risk factors versus management and outcome 7-30 days after trauma. We included all children seen in the emergency department and hospitalized who were aged between 0 and 15 years and had sustained HI. Data were compiled from the clinical records and analyzed for neurological evaluation with the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) and the Glasgow Paediatric Coma Score (GPCS), and also by means of dynamics, symptoms, skull X-rays, CT scans. ⋯ The lethality rate was 1.6%. Our preliminary data reveal that it is very important for new guidelines on the treatment of minor HI to be prepared, because patients with minor HI had undergone the most skull X-rays and also most frequently been admitted to hospital for unnecessarily long periods of time, though the incidence of brain damage (1.6%) was lowest in this group of the study population. We intend to carry out a full analysis of the various risk factors at the end of the study.