Epidemiological characteristics of Chinese paediatric traumatic brain injury inpatients

ABSTRACTPrimary objective: To investigate the epidemiological characteristics of paediatric inpatients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) in China. Research design: The Chinese Trauma Database (CTD), a nationwide register system based on hospital admission data, contains diagnosis and treatment information for trauma inpatients in over 200 military-managed public-service hospitals in China. Using the ICD-9 coding, the data for children with TBI aged 0–17 years between 2001 and 2007 were retrieved. Methods and procedures: The demographic characteristics, admission time, injury cause, severity and treatment outcomes of paediatric inpatients with TBI were analysed. Main outcomes and results: A total of 26,028 paediatric inpatients with TBI (69.52% male, 30.48% female) were included in the CTD. Motor vehicle traffic (MVT) accidents, falls and assaults were the primary causes of injury. Falls were the leading cause of TBI in children aged 0–4 years, and MVT was the leading cause of TBI in children aged 5–17 yea...