Prehospital emergency care : official journal of the National Association of EMS Physicians and the National Association of State EMS Directors
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Multicenter Study
The availability and use of out-of-hospital physiologic information to identify high-risk injured children in a multisite, population-based cohort.
The validity of using adult physiologic criteria to triage injured children in the out-of-hospital setting remains unproven. Among children meeting adult field physiologic criteria, we assessed the availability of physiologic information, the incidence of death or prolonged hospitalization, and whether age-specific criteria would improve the specificity of the physiologic triage step. ⋯ The incidence of high-risk injured children meeting adult physiologic criteria is relatively low and the findings from this sample do not support using age-specific values to better identify such children. However, the amount and pattern of missing data may compromise the value and practical use of field physiologic information in pediatric triage.