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PurposeFunctional outcomes have been proposed for assessing quality of pediatric trauma care. Outcomes assessments often rely on Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) severity scores to adjust for injury characteristics, but the relationship between AIS severity and functional impairment is unknown. This study's primary aim was to quantify functional impairment associated with increasing AIS severity scores within body regions. The secondary aim was to assess differences in impairment between body regions based on AIS severity.MethodsChildren with serious (AIS≥ 3) isolated body region injuries enrolled in a multicenter prospective study were analyzed. The primary outcome was functional status at discharge measured using the Functional Status Scale (FSS). Discharge FSS was compared (1) within each body region across increasing AIS severity scores, and (2) between body regions for injuries with matching AIS scores.ResultsThe study included 266 children, with 16% having abnormal FSS at discharge. Worse FSS was associated with increasing AIS severity only for spine injuries. Abnormal FSS was observed in a greater proportion of head injury patients with a severely impaired initial Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) (GCS

ObjectiveWe evaluated the acceptability of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) and other outcomes as the primary outcomes for a pediatric hemorrhagic trauma trial (TIC-TOC) among clinicians.MethodsWe conducted a mixed-methods study that included an electronic questionnaire followed by teleconference discussions. Participants confirmed or rejected the PedsQL as the primary outcome for the TIC-TOC trial and evaluated and proposed alternative primary outcomes. Responses were compiled and a list of themes and representative quotes was generated.Results73 of 91 (80%) participants completed the questionnaire. 61 (84%) participants agreed that the PedsQL is an appropriate primary outcome for children with hemorrhagic brain injuries. 32 (44%) participants agreed that the PedsQL is an acceptable primary outcome for children with hemorrhagic torso injuries, 27 (38%) participants were neutral, and 13 (18%) participants disagreed. Several themes were identified from responses, including that the PedsQL is an important and patient-centered outcome but may be affected by other factors, and that intracranial hemorrhage progression assessed by brain imaging (among patients with brain injuries) or blood product transfusion requirements (among patients with torso injuries) may be more objective outcomes than the PedsQL.ConclusionsThe PedsQL was a well-accepted proposed primary outcome for children with hemorrhagic brain injuries. Traumatic intracranial hemorrhage progression was favored by a subset of clinicians. A plurality of participants also considered the PedsQL an acceptable outcome for children with hemorrhagic torso injuries. Blood product transfusion requirement was favored by fewer participants.

BackgroundBest practices for benchmarking the efficacy of simulation-based training programs are not well defined. This study sought to assess feasibility of standardized data collection with multicenter implementation of simulation-based training, and to characterize variability in pediatric trauma resuscitation task completion associated with program characteristics.MethodsA prospective multicenter observational cohort of resuscitation teams (N = 30) was used to measure task completion and teamwork during simulated resuscitation of a child with traumatic brain injury. A survey was used to measure center-specific trauma volume and simulation-based training program characteristics among participating centers.ResultsNo task was consistently performed across all centers. Teamwork skills were associated with faster time to computed tomography notification (r = -0.51, p

Objective: Pediatric burn injuries are common injuries that are traumatic for the child and their families. Although many families report high amounts of distress soon after injury, most are resilient and do not continue to experience prolonged psychosocial problems. The aim was to identify factors associated with parent resilience after pediatric burn injury. Method: Fifty-seven parents of young children (< 5 years old) enrolled in a longitudinal assessment study. Baseline evaluations were conducted within 1 week of injury and included a medical chart review and parent self-report measures of resilience, social support, family functioning, and coping. Follow-up measurement of parent traumatic stress was measured 3 months after injury. We examined baseline resilience, positive emotionality, social support, family functioning, and problem-solving coping behaviors for relationships to traumatic stress. Results: Parent resilience at baseline was associated with lower rates of parent traumatic stress symptoms at follow-up. Lower rates of traumatic stress were more common in parents of older children with more trait-level resilience, more social support, and more planning problem-solving behaviors at baseline. Conclusions: Baseline resilience characteristics are associated with less traumatic stress for parents several months after the injury. Findings can be used to develop screening strategies and interventions that address planning and problem-solving and emphasize social support. Public Significance Statement Many children are injured every year, but only some families go on to have long lasting emotional concerns. This article aimed to explore family resilience after their young child experiences an unintentional burn injury. Findings that parents with more resilience, more social support, and more planning problem-solving behaviors at the time of injury experience better mental health outcomes can inform assessment and intervention strategies. Keywords: injuries, trauma, child, preschool, parents This article was published Online First May 12, 2022., In young children, pediatric burn injuries are among the top 10 leading causes of unintentional injury treated in United States emergency departments (National Electronic Injury Surveillance System All Injury Program, [...]

BackgroundUse of electronic clinical decision support (eCDS) has been recommended to improve implementation of clinical decision rules. Many eCDS tools, however, are designed and implemented without taking into account the context in which clinical work is performed. Implementation of the pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) clinical decision rule at one Level I pediatric emergency department includes an electronic questionnaire triggered when ordering a head computed tomography using computerized physician order entry (CPOE). Providers use this CPOE tool in less than 20% of trauma resuscitation cases. A human factors engineering approach could identify the implementation barriers that are limiting the use of this tool.ObjectivesThe objective was to design a pediatric TBI eCDS tool for trauma resuscitation using a human factors approach. The hypothesis was that clinical experts will rate a usability-enhanced eCDS tool better than the existing CPOE tool for user interface design and suitability for clinical use.MethodsThis mixed-methods study followed usability evaluation principles. Pediatric emergency physicians were surveyed to identify barriers to using the existing eCDS tool. Using standard trauma resuscitation protocols, a hierarchical task analysis of pediatric TBI evaluation was developed. Five clinical experts, all board-certified pediatric emergency medicine faculty members, then iteratively modified the hierarchical task analysis until reaching consensus. The software team developed a prototype eCDS display using the hierarchical task analysis. Three human factors engineers provided feedback on the prototype through a heuristic evaluation, and the software team refined the eCDS tool using a rapid prototyping process. The eCDS tool then underwent iterative usability evaluations by the five clinical experts using video review of 50 trauma resuscitation cases. A final eCDS tool was created based on their feedback, with content analysis of the evaluations performed to ensure all concerns were identified and addressed.ResultsAmong 26 EPs (76% response rate), the main barriers to using the existing tool were that the information displayed is redundant and does not fit clinical workflow. After the prototype eCDS tool was developed based on the trauma resuscitation hierarchical task analysis, the human factors engineers rated it to be better than the CPOE tool for nine of 10 standard user interface design heuristics on a three-point scale. The eCDS tool was also rated better for clinical use on the same scale, in 84% of 50 expert-video pairs, and was rated equivalent in the remainder. Clinical experts also rated barriers to use of the eCDS tool as being low.ConclusionsAn eCDS tool for diagnostic imaging designed using human factors engineering methods has improved perceived usability among pediatric emergency physicians.

Survival analysis endures as an old, yet active research field with applications that spread across many domains. Continuing improvements in data acquisition techniques pose constant challenges in applying existing survival analysis methods to these emerging data sets. In this paper, we present tools for fitting regularized Cox survival analysis models on high-dimensional, massive sample-size (HDMSS) data using a variant of the cyclic coordinate descent optimization technique tailored for the sparsity that HDMSS data often present. Experiments on two real data examples demonstrate that efficient analyses of HDMSS data using these tools result in improved predictive performance and calibration.