JPS Journal Club: July 2019 Part 2
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Key Takeaways
- Children improperly restrained or unrestrained in motor vehicle collisions have significantly higher injury severity scores than properly restrained peers.
- Zero to seven year-olds have the highest rate of improper restraint (often just lap-belt), yet this is the age group parents control most.
- Shoulder strap positioned behind the head is a common misuse; proper booster seat use prevents this and reduces head/neck injury risk.
- Modern vehicle technology can detect child weight and seatbelt status per seat, enabling real-time parental awareness of restraint compliance.
- Children should remain in booster seats until adult-sized to ensure proper shoulder-strap positioning and optimal crash protection.
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Transcript
Okay, so after that great discussion on firearm injury, uh, we're going to have Dr. Ray Hanky, uh, talking about, uh, motor vehicle collisions and their impact in pediatric trauma. When I was reading this issue of JPS, um, I was thinking back to growing up and road tripping with my brothers. Um, I don't know if any of you guys had similar situations, but we never wore our seat belt correctly. So this article in particular stood out to me. Um, so Finley at all out of Rutgers looked at injury severity score for patients that were either restrained or unrestrained/ restrained improperly. They just grouped those together and they basically found if you're not restrained or if you're restrained improperly, like me as a child, um, you had significantly increase in your, um, injury severity score. They they looked at it by age group and which patients were not properly restrained and the highest percentage was in kids zero to seven years of age where arguably as adults and parents, we have the most control. Um, and they looked at it and about half of those kids mostly were just wearing a seat belt. So zero to seven years old, we should have booster seats, car seats, basically until you're adult sized, you should be sitting on something else. The shoulder strap behind the head is a very common, um, misuse of seatbelts. My kids, I look back and see them doing it as well. So, the way to prevent that is to teach parents about sitting them in a booster or in a way that it's not rubbing up against their neck and then they won't be inclined to put it behind their shoulder. And then if they are, if it is rubbing against their neck, like they're at risk for head neck injuries. That was the number one injury pattern in these kiddos. There are new advances in automobiles that are going to be keep moving us towards safety as this is becoming a priority. For example, my car actually shows me all the seats and can show you, it detects the weight of a child and it shows that their seat belt is not attached. So I can tell you which person is actually not fastened. Uh, a lot of times unfortunately, it's my wife. This was the second of three reviews focusing on the July issue of JPS. Stay tuned for our final episode where we'll discuss the position statement on child abuse.