Pediatric disaster preparedness: the potential role of the trauma registry

Improving trauma care and preparing for a disaster require data collection and analysis. Trauma registries capture data for research, measure trauma system outcomes, and support quality improvement through assessment of the appropriateness and effectiveness of the trauma system.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the role of trauma registries in disaster planning for the pediatric population by: (1) describing the history and current state of pediatric trauma registries; (2) providing examples of functioning trauma registries and their application to assist in disaster planning; and (3) a summary of the applicability to pediatric disaster planning as well as recommendations for future efforts.

The National Pediatric Trauma Registry was discontinued in 2002. A detailed plan and design have been developed for the National Trauma Registry for Children; however, the funding has not been available to implement. The National Trauma Data Bank is the largest repository of trauma records in the United States; however, it has not focused specifically on pediatric data collection. The most highly reported use of trauma registry data for studying mass casualties and disaster planning has been conducted outside of the United States and related to terrorist attacks.

Aggregating existing data from state trauma registries or using the National Trauma Data Bank may facilitate development of statistical models to help predict survival, injury patterns, and important physiological thresholds. However, representative pediatric-specific trauma registry data are needed to obtain an adequate sample size in pediatric population to extrapolate data to represent the scale of a disaster.