Researchers from Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., compared mortality rates of 29,613 injured adolescents, ages 15 to 19, when treated at adult trauma centers, pediatric trauma centers and mixed trauma centers. The studied adolescents all had a blunt or penetrating injury.
Most of the adolescents were treated at adult trauma centers (68.9 percent), and only 5.5 percent of them went to a pediatric trauma center.
Pediatric trauma centers had the lowest mortality rate for these injured adolescents, at 0.4 percent. Adult trauma centers and mixed trauma centers had death rates of 3.2 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively.
The authors were not able to determine why the mortality rates varied so greatly between treatment locations.
“The optimal care of adolescents at all center types requires the identification of either additional patient differences or treatment practices that account for this mortality difference. Analysis of this association of specific care processes with mortality at center types will be needed to further clarify the etiology of these differences in mortality,” the study concludes.
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