Analysis of characteristics of children with unintentional injuries admitted in Pediatric Intensive Care Unit from 2017 to 2022 in Shanghai, China.

Background: Understanding the patterns of unintentional injuries (UIs) among children admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) is crucial for effective prevention and management. We aimed to explore the demographic, situational and clinical characteristics of children with UIs admitted to the PICU.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional, retrospective study of patients under 18 with UIs admitted to the PICU of Children's Hospital of Fudan University from October 2017 to December 2022.

Results: A total of 395 children were admitted, with a mean (SD) age of 5.6 (3.7) years. Road traffic injuries (RTI) (146 (37%)) and high falls (119 (30.1%)) were dominant. Patients with foreign body injuries had a lower median (Q1, Q3) age of 1.6 (1.1, 1.8) years (P＜0.001). Most UIs occurred when children were alone (318 (80.5%), P＜0.001), during recreation (61 (15.4%), P＜0.001) and indoors (212 (53.7%), P＜0.001). Injury types differed significantly in hospital stay length (P＜0.001) and prognosis (P＜0.001). Compared with RTIs, drowning and poisoning were more likely to result in poor prognosis (drowning OR=9.778 (3.515,28.537), P＜0.001; poisoning OR=3.556 (1.123,10.428), p=0.023).

Conclusions: RTIs and high falls were the leading types of children with UIs admitted to the PICU. Injury patterns varied with age, situational characteristics and involved substantial medical costs. Tailored interventions based on injury patterns are essential to improve child safety and well-being.