Trends of Pediatric Injuries Amongst 5-Year-Olds Presented in the Emergency Department: A Retrospective Cross-Sectional Study

Objective To identify the types of injuries and injury mechanisms amongst 5-year-old children presenting to Emergency Departments in a sample of public hospitals in the Klang Valley, Malaysia. Materials & Methods Eight thousand five hundred thirty-seven case presentations of five-year-olds attended the Emergency Department in 2013, were extracted and collected from two electronic databases (eHis and Powerchart) from three major public hospitals in the Klang Valley from May 2015 until May 2016. Results More than half of 5-year-old patients attending the ED were males (54.6%) in comparison to females (45.4%). In terms of ethnicity, overall, the majority of patients who attended all three hospitals were Malays (73.4%), followed by Indians (13.2%), Chinese (11.4%), others/indigenous (0.9%) and Foreigners (0.8%). Injuries accounted for 12.2 percent (n=250) of all ED presentations at Serdang Hospital, 9.5 percent (n=261) in Selayang Hospital and 12.4 percent (n=379) at Sg Buloh Hospital. Overall, males were 1.5 times more likely to present with an injury compared with females. But females had a higher risk of presenting to EDs with abuse/neglect/assault compared to males. Conclusion The findings from the analysis of hospital records (low rates of recorded CAN cases) provided strong evidence that there are significant gaps in identifying non-accidental injuries in the clinical setting in Malaysia due to the ‘grey’ area that exists especially amongst 5-year-olds. The study also found that being male and of Malay ethnicity increases the child’s risk of injuries. Keywords Child abuse and neglect (CAN); Emergency Department (ED); Quantitative study; Healthcare professionals; Childhood injuries.