Characterizing physical trauma in children and youth with special health care needs

Children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) have or are at an increased risk for a chronic condition necessitating medical and related services beyond what children usually require. While evidence suggests that CYSHCN are at an increased risk of injury, little is known about this population within the trauma system. This study describes CYSHCN within the pediatric trauma system and examines patterns of injury risk (i.e., intent, place of injury, trauma type, and mechanism of injury) based on special health care need (SHCN) status.

For this cross-sectional study, we used data from the 2018 National Trauma Data Bank to identify pediatric encounters (1-18 years, N = 115,578) and compare demographics (sex, race/ethnicity, insurance status, and age) by CYSHCN status using χ 2 and t tests. Children and youth with special health care needs encounters were compared with non-SHCN encounters using multinomial logistic regression models, controlling for demographics.

Overall, 16.7% pediatric encounters reported an SHCN. Children and youth with special health care needs encounters are older, and a higher proportion is publicly insured than non-SHCN encounters ( p < 0.001). Furthermore, CYSHCN encounters have a higher risk of assault (relative risk, 1.331) and self-inflicted (relative risk, 4.208) injuries relative to unintentional injury ( p < 0.001), as well as a higher relative risk of traumatic injury occurring in a private residence ( p < 0.01) than other locations such as school (relative risk, 0.894). Younger CYSHCN encounters have a higher risk of assault relative to unintentional injury when compared with non-SHCN encounters ( p < 0.01). Pediatric trauma encounters reporting mental health and alcohol/substance use disorder SHCN have a higher probability of self-inflicted and assault injuries than non-SHCN encounters ( p < 0.001).

These findings suggest that CYSHCN have different traumatic injury patterns than their non-SHCN peers, particularly in terms of intentional and private residence injury, and deserve a special focus for traumatic injury prevention.

Prognostic/epidemiologic, level III.