Circumstances of Trauma and Accidents in Children: A Thesaurus-based Survey

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Emergency Medicine
• Public Health
• Medical Informatics

Background:

• Childhood injuries and accidents are significant causes of morbidity and mortality in France.
• Accurate identification and description of accident mechanisms are vital for effective prevention strategies.
• Existing coding systems may not adequately capture the nuances of trauma circumstances in children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the relevance and acceptability of a newly created thesaurus for ICD-10 codes related to child trauma circumstances.
• To assess the thesaurus's utility in a pediatric emergency unit setting.

Main Methods:

• A two-phase study was conducted at Saint-Etienne university hospital's pediatric emergency unit.
• Phase 1: Longitudinal comparison of physician coding before and after thesaurus implementation.
• Phase 2: Retrospective comparison of coding data from before and after thesaurus introduction.

Main Results:

• The thesaurus significantly reduced information loss, enabling appropriate coding of trauma circumstances in over 90% of cases.
• A 13% increase in coding the circumstances of trauma was observed after thesaurus implementation.
• Despite improvements, the coding of trauma circumstances remained insufficient in some instances.

Conclusions:

• The developed thesaurus facilitates coding and meets the expectations of coding physicians.
• The thesaurus is a valuable tool for improving the capture of detailed information on childhood accidents.
• The thesaurus should be utilized in large-scale epidemiological surveys for enhanced data accuracy in child injury research.