Home Accidents among Children:  A Retrospective Study at a Tertiary Care Center in Oman

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Abstract

Objectives

We sought to identify the prevalence, commonest causes, and severity of home accident injuries and their effects on children who present to the emergency department (ED) of a university-tertiary hospital in Oman.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective study among children aged ≤ 18 years old who presented with home accidents to the ED between January and June 2017. A checklist for data collection was designed to include demographic data, causes and effects of home accidents, and treatment outcomes. The data was retrieved from the hospital electronic patient records.

Results

A total of 1333 children presented to the ED over six months as a result of unintentional home accidents, giving a prevalence of 7.7% from all children who visited the ED. There was a significant male to female ratio of 1.7:1. The most prevalent causes for home accidents were ^‘falls’ in 716 (53.7%) children, followed by ^‘struck by/against-animate/inanimate mechanical force’ in 201 (15.1%) children. ‘Poisoning’ was the third major cause in 117 (8.8%) children. Severity scale showed that around 36.0% of children suffered from severe injuries and 5.4% were admitted to the hospital.

Conclusions

Despite this study being a single-center study in Oman, it indicates a high prevalence and severity of unintentional home accidents among children. The study findings suggest the need for implementing strategies to raise public awareness of child safety at home and to improve the preparedness of healthcare providers in ED to deal with such accidents.

Related collections

Most cited references 17

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Cross sectional survey of socioeconomic variations in severity and mechanism of childhood injuries in Trent 1992-7.

Carol Coupland, Boki SP Savelyich, Julia Hippisley-Cox … (2002)

To determine the relation between morbidity from injury and deprivation for different levels of injury severity and for different injury mechanisms for children aged 0-14 years. Cross sectional survey of routinely collected hospital admission data for injury 1992-7. 862 electoral wards in Trent Region. 21 587 injury related hospital admissions for children aged 0-4 years and 35 042 admissions for children aged 5-14. Rate ratios for hospital admission for all injuries, all injuries involving long bone fracture, and all injuries involving long bone fracture requiring an operation; rate ratios for hospital admission for six types of injury mechanism divided by quintiles of the electoral wards' Townsend scores for deprivation. Rate ratios calculated by Poisson regression, with adjustment for distance from nearest hospital admitting patients with injuries, rurality, ethnicity, and percentage of males in each electoral ward. Both total number of admissions for injury and admissions for injuries of higher severity increased with increasing socioeconomic deprivation. These gradients were more marked for 0-4 year old children than 5-14 year olds. In terms of injury mechanisms, the steepest socioeconomic gradients (where the rate for the fifth of electoral wards with the highest deprivation scores was > or =3 times that of the fifth with the lowest scores) were for pedestrian injuries (adjusted rate ratio 3.65 (95% confidence interval 2.94 to 4.54)), burns and scalds (adjusted rate ratio 3.49 (2.81 to 4.34)), and poisoning (adjusted rate ratio 2.98 (2.65 to 3.34)). There are steep socioeconomic gradients for injury morbidity including the most common mechanisms of injury. This has implications for targeting injury prevention interventions and resources.

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Unintentional injuries in the home in the United States Part I: mortality.

Peter Johnson, C. W. Black, David Perkis … (2004)

Unintentional injuries are a leading cause of death in the United States. It is unclear, however, what proportion of these injuries occur in the home. The purpose of this paper is to quantify and describe fatal unintentional injuries that take place in the home environment. Data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) were used to calculate average annual rates for unintentional home injury deaths, with 95% confidence intervals from 1992 to 1999 for the United States overall, and by mechanism of injury, gender, and age group. From 1992 to 1999, an average of 18,048 unintentional home injury deaths occurred annually in the United States (6.83 deaths per 100,000). Home injury deaths varied by age and gender, with males having higher rates of home injury death than females (8.78 vs 4.97 per 100,000), and older adults (>/=70 years) having higher rates than all other age groups. Falls (2.25 per 100,000), poisoning (1.83 per 100,000), and fire/burn injuries (1.29 per 100,000) were the leading causes of home injury death. Rates of fall death were highest for older adults, poisoning deaths were highest among middle-aged adults, and fire/burn death rates were highest among children. Inhalation/suffocation and drowning deaths were important injury issues for young children. Unintentional injury in the home is a significant problem. Specific home injury issues include falls among older adults, poisonings among middle-aged adults, fire/burn injuries among older adults and children, and inhalation/suffocation and drowning among young children. In addition, recommendations are presented for improvements to the NVSS.

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Injury mortality and morbidity among children in the United Arab Emirates.

A Bener, K Al-Salman, R Pugh (1998)

The objective of this study was to identify the major causes of accident mortality and morbidity among children (0-14 years) in Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates (UAE). A retrospective descriptive study was set in the Al-Ain Hospital and Preventive Medicine Department, Ministry of Health, Al-Ain. Subjects were all patients aged 0-14 years who were seen at Al-Ain Hospital for injury during the 12-month period January to December 1995, and all recorded deaths aged 0-14 years in Preventive Medicine Department from 1980 to 1995. Mortality: 301 children (69.4% males, 30.6% females) died after accidents from 1980 to 1995. UAE citizens and other Arabs represented the majority of deaths. Most mortality (28.6%) occurred in the 1-4 year age group. Head and neck injury was the major type of injury causing death (57.5%). The most common cause of accidental death was road traffic accidents (boys 67.1%, girls 60.4%), followed by drowning and burns (8%). Morbidity: Pediatric trauma cases seen during 1995 totaled 17,498, representing one third of all patients attending the Hospital Emergency Room. About 70% of encountered injuries occurred among boys; 44.6% of cases were UAE citizens. The most common trauma type was contusion (40.2% boys; 40.6% girls), the most common type of trauma in boys and girls (30.4% and 36%, respectively). In the age group <5 years, the most common causes of trauma were fall (41.1%), blunt trauma (38.7%) and burns or scalds (64%), while in 5-9 year olds, the most common cause was road traffic accidents (40%). Finally, in 10-14 year olds, the most frequent causes were traffic accidents (32.8%) sharp objects injuries (38.3%), and fights and sporting (28.9%). More boys than girls presented with injury and the majority were nationals. Road traffic accidents mainly occurred in children over 10 years.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Oman Med J

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Oman Med J

Journal ID (publisher-id): OMJ

Title: Oman Medical Journal

Publisher: OMJ

ISSN (Print): 1999-768X

ISSN (Electronic): 2070-5204

Publication date (Electronic): 06 January 2020

Publication date Collection: January 2020

Volume: 35

Issue: 1

Page: e85

Affiliations

[1]Nursing Department, Sultan Qaboos University Hospital, Muscat, Oman

Author notes

[* ]Corresponding author: ✉ alrumhi@ 123456squ.edu.om

Article

Publisher ID: OMJ-35-01-1900051

DOI: 10.5001/omj.2020.03

PMC ID: 6975254

PubMed ID: 32042466

SO-VID: 7c47cda0-afd8-4e33-98ed-ec2a4b40b59c

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/