Professional paper
THE INCIDENCE OF CHILDREN HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ADMISSION DUE TO TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS
MARTINA MIKŠAJ
orcid.org/0000-0003-4619-8705
; Zagreb University Hospital Centre, Emergency Department, Zagreb, Croatia
KATA IVANIŠEVIĆ
; University of Rijeka, Faculty of Health Studies, Rijeka, Croatia
Abstract
Although traffi c injuries are one of the main causes of death in children aged ≤18 years, they can both be predicted and prevented. It has been proven that interventions such as implementation of the National Road Safety Program can contribute to road safety and thus reduce the number of injuries and deaths in children as a particularly vulnerable group of road users. Countries that have successfully implemented such interventions report a consequently reduced number of fatalities. The aim of this paper is to present the number of screened children in Emergency Department (ED) who were involved in road accidents in 2019, the number of screened children by triage category, the number of admissions to hospital after treatment at ED, the most frequent injuries in hospitalized children, and age groups of children screened in ED. The care of injured children begins at the scene of the accident, lasts during transport and continues at the hospital, following the principles of simultaneous diagnosis and treatment. Research shows that implementation of the Road Safety Program has contributed to reduction of child mortality in traffi c. The results obtained in the study showed that out of the total number of 9461 examined children who were admitted due to trauma in the observed period, 183 (1.97%) were participants in road accidents, whereas the remaining 9281 (98.1%) were examined for other types of trauma. As the implementation period of the Road Safety Program in the Republic of Croatia is at its end, fi nal reports are not yet known, and data collected at micro levels, such as the data presented in this paper, can show that the number of children injured in road accidents is declining.
Keywords
National Road Safety Program; children; traffic accident
Hrčak ID:
236583
URI
Publication date:
16.3.2020.
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