A Review of Pediatric Pedestrian Injuries at a Level I Trauma Center

Understanding the etiology of pediatric pedestrianmotor vehicle injuries requires a complete understanding of the distribution of these injuries by severity, body region, and age. A review is presented of injuries to all pediatric pedestrian crash victims that survived to presentation to a pediatric level one trauma center (Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, D.C., USA). The data is a retrospective review of the pediatric trauma registry. The data consists of 4,887 injuries in 1,629 patients (ages 0 to 18 years). The overall injury distributions confirmed the findings of earlier studies showing the head and lower limbs to be the most vulnerable body regions. For the head, the rate of soft tissue injuries and severe injuries decreased with increasing age of the pedestrian. For the lower limb, a transition between femur and tibia/fibula injuries occurred as the child matured. This data should help prioritize areas of focus in developing vehicle countermeasures for the pediatric pedestrian population.