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Accidental Physical Trauma in Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs: A Scoping Review
Denise F Lillvis1, Brooks Harmon2, Hector Osei3
1Division of Health Services Policy and Practice (D Lillvis and B Harmon), Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, School of Public Health and Health Professions, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY; Department of Surgery (D Lillvis and H Osei), Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY.
Background:
Children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) may be at greater risk for accidental physical trauma. Interventions should be informed by the literature indicating incident characteristics and at-risk subpopulations.
Objective:
To conduct a scoping review of accidental physical trauma in CYSHCN to characterize published literature and identify gaps.
Data Sources:
Peer-reviewed literature within CINAHL, Embase, and PubMed, 1998 to February 2021.
Study Eligibility Criteria:
Studies that included individuals younger than 19 with special health care need(s) with accidental injuries classified as trauma.
Study Appraisal And Synthesis Methods:
The study team extracted: research method, author field, special health care needs, geographic scope, author country, demographics, incident characteristics, and injury characteristics.
Results:
We included 85 articles from an initial yield of 10,481. Pediatrics (32%) was the most-represented field among authors published on this topic. Publications most often considered developmental conditions (77.7%), including Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD). Studies differed in how often they reported demographic characteristics: gender (96.5%); social determinants of health/socioeconomic status (41.2%) or race and ethnicity (25.9%). Few articles included injury time of day (10.6%) and day of week (2.4%); 40% did not include information about the place of injury.
Limitations:
Our search term development focused on diagnosis rather than need; we did not search reference lists or grey literature.
Conclusions And Implications Of Key Findings:
This review reveals key gaps in the literature pertaining to incident characteristics and place of injury for CYSHCN. Those advising families and/or planning interventions focused on mitigating risk for CYSHCN have limited evidence upon which to rely for certain conditions.
Systematic Review Registration Number:
PROSPERO registration is not applicable to scoping reviews.
