Outcomes of head trauma in children admitted to a tertiary paediatric intensive care unit in South Wales.

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the demographics and outcomes of major paediatric head trauma managed in our Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) in South Wales and comparison is made with the existing published literature.

Design and setting: A retrospective review of medical records and imaging of patients identified from the paediatric neurosurgical trauma database at University Hospital Wales (UHW) from March 2013 to July 2021. We assessed the GCS at admission, mechanism of injury, CT scan, type of surgery required and GOS after 12 months.

Patients: A total of 46 children (<16 years old) who were admitted to intensive care secondary to a traumatic brain injury were identified. Mean age was 7.6 years (range 0 days-15.7 years).

Results: Road traffic accidents (RTA) were the predominant mechanism of injury (56.5%), followed by falls (32.6%). Neurosurgical intervention, including stand-alone ICP monitoring was required in 69.6% of patients. Post discharge outcome was defined using the Glasgow Outcome Score (GOS), with a good functional outcome (GOS ≥4) accounting for 86.4% at 12 months follow-up. Survival rate was 93.4%.

Conclusion: Demographics in South Wales are similar to the published literature, except falls had a higher mortality than RTA in our cohort. Head injury mechanisms, surgical interventions and outcomes show variation between patients from the pre-covid and lockdown periods. Outcomes are good for surgically and conservatively treated patients and very comparable to the published literature.