Accidental Physical Trauma in Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs: A Scoping Review.

BACKGROUND

Children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) may be at greater risk for accidental physical trauma. Interventions should be informed by the literature indicating incident characteristics and at-risk subpopulations.

OBJECTIVE

To conduct a scoping review of accidental physical trauma in CYSHCN to characterize published literature and identify gaps.

DATA SOURCES: Peer-reviewed literature within CINAHL, Embase, and PubMed, 1998 to February 2021.

STUDY ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Studies that included individuals younger than 19 with special health care need(s) with accidental injuries classified as trauma.

STUDY APPRAISAL AND SYNTHESIS

METHODS

The study team extracted: research method, author field, special health care needs, geographic scope, author country, demographics, incident characteristics, and injury characteristics.

RESULTS

We included 85 articles from an initial yield of 10,481. Pediatrics (32%) was the most-represented field among authors published on this topic. Publications most often considered developmental conditions (77.7%), including Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD). Studies differed in how often they reported demographic characteristics: gender (96.5%); social determinants of health/socioeconomic status (41.2%) or race and ethnicity (25.9%). Few articles included injury time of day (10.6%) and day of week (2.4%); 40% did not include information about the place of injury.

LIMITATIONS: Our search term development focused on diagnosis rather than need; we did not search reference lists or grey literature.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF KEY FINDINGS: This review reveals key gaps in the literature pertaining to incident characteristics and place of injury for CYSHCN. Those advising families and/or planning interventions focused on mitigating risk for CYSHCN have limited evidence upon which to rely for certain conditions.

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION NUMBER: PROSPERO registration is not applicable to scoping reviews.