Childhood Injuries in Tehran: a Review of 1281 Cases

Childhood injuries cause significant mortality and morbidity in Iran, like in other developing countries. This study was undertaken to describe the pattern of pediatric trauma in a multi-center hospital-based study. Pre-hospital and hospital data were prospectively gathered on all hospitalized trauma patients admitted to six major trauma hospitals in Tehran from August 1999 to September 2000. Data from patients 12 years of age and younger were analyzed for this article. About 15.1% of the hospitalized trauma cases belonged to children. Mean age was 7.35 +/- 3.25 years and 69.1% of cases were male. Most of the cases were injured accidentally. More than half of the cases were injured due to falls, followed by road traffic accidents. Injuries in streets were the most common, followed by injuries at home. Recently, several injury prevention strategies have been designed and developed in Iran, and it is hoped these may contribute to decreasing the burden of childhood injuries in Iran.