Researchers create road map for pediatric head trauma

UW Medicine | The Huddle| January, 30, 2019

Monica S. Vavilala, MD, Director and Traumatic Brain Injury Section Lead

Severe traumatic brain injury is a leading cause of death and disability in children leaving 61 percent of survivors with a lifelong disability, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

Guidelines have existed to treat pediatric patients with severe head trauma, but there has been no standardized measure of their effectiveness.

Now, researchers at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle have developed such a protocol. The “Pediatric Guideline Adherence and Outcomes” protocol (PEGASUS), was tested among 199 pediatric cases at Harborview, and the results were recently published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.

PEGASUS is the first comprehensive care model for children with head trauma, said lead researcher Monica Vavilala, director of Harborview’s Injury Prevention and Research Center.

“We’ve been able to provide a roadmap for what is agreed-upon as good quality care,” she said. MORE