Applicability of the CATCH, CHALICE and PECARN paediatric head injury clinical decision rules: pilot data from a single Australian centre

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Clinical decision rules (CDRs) for paediatric head injury (HI) exist to identify children at risk of traumatic brain injury. Those of the highest quality are the Canadian assessment of tomography for childhood head injury (CATCH), Children's head injury algorithm for the prediction of important clinical events (CHALICE) and Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) CDRs. They target different cohorts of children with HI and have not been compared in the same setting. We set out to quantify the proportion of children with HI to which each CDR was applicable. METHODS: Consecutive children presenting to an Australian paediatric Emergency Department with HIs were enr..