Smacc

Natalie May gives you the break down of paediatric trauma. Paediatric trauma is relatively rare but terrifying. However, there are many ways we can think about paediatric trauma to make these challenging situations easier to face. Children are inherently portable. This means that they often turn up at peripheral, non-paediatric centres that are not major trauma centres. This highlights the importance of all physicians knowing how to deal with these cases. Anatomy and physiology of children is different to adults. Their ability to compensate is remarkable. This means the index of suspicion of serious injury should be higher. For instance, their ribs are a lot more pliable than those of adults, meaning hollow viscous organ injuries are more common following trauma. Similarly, their vital signs can be more confounding. Tachycardia could simply mean fear or pain. On the other hand, it could indicate a major internal bleed. This leads to children being under and over triaged at a high rate. Teenagers also present