Chronic Wounds in Children: Prevalence, Aetiological Types and Predilection Sites in a Rural Setting in an Emerging Economy

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence, aetiological types and predilection sites of chronic wounds in children. This study was a cross sectional study conducted on children aged 0-15 years. Through cluster sampling technique, children with wounds were recruited and evaluated. Demographic and clinical data were collected and analyzed. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize variables and Chi-squared test was used to achieve comparison between age groups and sexes. Statistical significance was defined as p<0.05. The results show that one thousand and ten children were screened for wounds out of which 107 children with 115 wounds were found. 16.5% of these wounds were chronic with a prevalence rate of 2.0%. Chronic wound prevalences in the school aged (47.4%) and adolescent (52.6%) children were 0.9% and 1.0% respectively (x 2 = 0.821; p = 0.359 Yates’ corrected, Fisher’s exact test 2-sided) and statistically insignificant. 57.9% were caused by trauma and majority (89.5%) occurred in the lower limbs (x 2 =0.000; p=1.000 Yates’ corrected, Fisher’s exact test 2-sided) without any statistical significance. Prevalence of chronic wounds in the children population was very low. The commonest aetiological type was inadequately treated traumatic wounds which progressively healed on institution of appropriate wound treatment.