Pediatric Emergency Playbook

Traumatized children need your full attention. Protocols work well for adults, but trauma in children requires that we exercise our clinical muscles just a bit more.   Two main reasons:  Children have specific injury patterns  Their physiologic response to trauma is unique.   Crash course in pediatric anatomy and physiology in trauma When you think of trauma in children, think of Charlie Brown. Large head, no neck, his chest and abdomen form an underdeveloped, amorphous shape. Alternatively, think of children as apples – they are rounder than they are tall, with a large increased surface area. Apples don’t have a hard shell or thick rind to protect them. If you drop them, you may not see any evidence of damage to the outside, but there can be considerable bruising just under the surface. A child has thin skin, less subcutaneous deposits than an adult, and a non-calcified, pliable thorax that deforms more than it protects or shields. The child’s abdominal muscles are not yet developed. There is less per