Retrospective Analysis of Injuries Sustained In Vehicle Front‐ and Back‐Overs in a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center

Abstract

Motor vehicle accidents involving pedestrians are some of the most common and lethal forms of injury for children in the United States. Among younger children, a common mechanism of action for severe trauma is when a vehicle runs over the child in a forward or backward motion at low speed resulting in a blunt crush injury. This typically occurs in non‐traffic settings including driveways, sidewalks, and roadways. Such incidents have been referred to in many different ways in the literature but for the purposes of this paper will be referred to as low speed vehicle run‐overs. This is a retrospective chart review carried out at Phoenix Children’s Hospital in affiliation with the University of Arizona College of Medicine‐Phoenix that categorizes and examines the injuries sustained by patients involved in low speed vehicle runovers occurring between December 2007 and August 2013. Fifty‐five pediatric patients were included with a median age of 24 months and 6 of these patients were fatally injured. Internal injuries were common overall and significantly more common in children ≤24months. Over half of the cohort sustained fractures, with a 24% incidence of skull fractures. All fatalities were the result of traumatic brain injury. Twenty percent of victims required operative intervention. It was concluded that the severity of these types of incidents varies from minimal to life threatening and best care requires close and thorough evaluation by the trauma and emergency department teams.