CT head findings in infant and toddler accidental head trauma
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A single-centre, retrospective cohort study of CT head pathologies in infants and toddlers presenting to ED due to head injury from an accidental fall
IRAS ID
305936
Contact name
Jayaratnam Jayamohan
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
OUH R&D
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 1 days
Research summary
A retrospective, data-analysis only, cohort study of infants and toddlers (≤2 years) who presented to the ED with head injuries due to a fall within a 10 year period (1/1/12-1/1/22)at the John Radcliffe hospital, and who underwent a CT scan to examine the consequences of those injuries. We will be looking at CT scans of the heads of those children who suffered falls and identifying patterns of intracranial and cranial injury, the specific details of which are discussed in the outcomes section. Furthermore, we will investigate the effect of fall height and fall surface on CT head pathologies as part of our analysis, using the same imaging parameters. This will be carried out using the CRIS, ORBIT and EPR reporting systems which will allow us to analyse patient data in the target cohort. We will perform an image search on CRIS, filtering by age (≤2) and type of scan (CT head). From this list we will filter out those CT head scans which were not performed as part of a head trauma assessment. We will harvest data from the CT scan reports in order to identify patterns of cranial and intracranial injury(as described in outcomes section). Using the MRN numbers from this database, we will use EPR and ORBIT to find medical history data which describes the type of trauma (e.g. due to fall, assault, road traffic accident). We will only be including injuries due to falls in our analysis. EPR and orbit will also provide information about the height of the fall, as well as the surface which the child fell onto. The importance of this study lies in allowing clinicians to better understand the expected spectrum of intracranial injury caused by a fall from a given height. That is to say that this study will aim to demonstrate that falls from a certain height can demonstrably cause a particular pattern of injury on CT. Furthermore, we aim to identify the existence of ‘outlier findings’ on CT head of children who have suffered accidental injuries. That is, we want to identify the absolute possibility of certain pathologies on CT occurring due to accidental injury which are very rare in number. There is a danger that these very uncommon injuries are more likely to be labelled as the result of abuse due to their relative rarity. This will improve healthcare for patients as it will clarify the CT findings which may be found as a result of accidental head injury, and reciprocally will clarify the injuries which are not seen (or are extremely unlikely) due to accidental injury.
REC name
South Central - Oxford B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/SC/0328
Date of REC Opinion
21 Sep 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion