The 2013 Pediatric Report of the National Trauma Data Bank® (NTDB®) is an updated analysis of the largest aggregation of U.S. and Canadian trauma registry data ever assembled. In total, the NTDB now contains more than 5 million records. The 2013 Annual Report is based on 773,299 records, submitted by 803 facilities, from the single admission year of 2012. The 2013 Pediatric Report is based on 152,884 admission records from 2012. The NTDB classifies pediatric patients in this report as patients who are younger than 20 years old.
The mission of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Committee on Trauma (COT) is to develop and implement meaningful programs for trauma care. In keeping with this mission, the NTDB is committed to being the principal national repository for trauma center registry data. The purpose of this report is to inform the medical community, the public, and decision makers about a range of issues that characterize the current state of care for injured pediatric patients in the U.S. It has implications in many areas, including epidemiology, injury control, research, education, acute care, and resource allocation.
Disturbing findings
When reviewing the records of patients who were tested for either alcohol or illicit/prescription drugs, for example, a disturbing trend surfaces. A total of 34,923 pediatric patients were tested for blood alcohol, and 7,202 (21 percent) tested positive. Of the 19,057 patients tested for drugs, 6,684 (36 percent) tested positive for illegal drug use, while another 2,755 (14 percent) tested positive for prescription drug use. This type of information could be very useful for injury control/prevention and education targeted to at-risk pediatric populations. Our children should grow up to become something more than consumers of alcohol and drugs (see Figures 1 and 2).
Figure 1. Pediatric drug consumption
Figure 2. Pediatric alcohol consumption
Many dedicated individuals on the ACS COT, including the Pediatric Surgery Subspecialty group, along with dedicated individuals caring for pediatric patients at trauma centers around the country, have contributed to the early development of the NTDB and its rapid growth in recent years. Building on these achievements, the goals in the coming years include improving data quality, updating analytic methods, and enabling more useful inter-hospital comparisons. These efforts will be reflected in future NTDB reports to participating hospitals, as well as in annual Pediatric Reports.
Throughout the year, we will be highlighting these data through brief reports in the Bulletin. The National Trauma Data Bank 2013 Pediatric Report is available on the ACS website as a PDF file at www.ntdb.org. In addition, information about how to obtain NTDB data for more detailed study is available on the website. To learn more about submitting your trauma center’s data, contact Melanie L. Neal, Manager, NTDB, at mneal@facs.org.
