With some prompting from SPIN, we have been looking into children injuries involving propellers. We still have many thoughts to sort out, but are beginning to store them here for future development of the site.

We have started to accumulate some references in this area:

• Demographics of Traumatic Amputations in Children: Implications for Prevention Strategies. The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. May 2004. Pgs. 923-928. This study covers the classic children amputations: Lawn Mowers, Farming, Motor Vehicle, Train, Explosives, Burn, Boating, Gunshot Wound, etc. The study reviewed children receiving care at one upper midwestern U.S. hospital (Shriners Hospital for Children in Minneapolis) from 1980-2000. Statistical analysis were performed. It does a nice job of placing propeller injuries to children in perspective with these other well known causes, and provides some suggestions for reducing traumatic amputations in children.

• Psychological Adjustment in Children After Traumatic Disfiguring Injuries: A 12 Month Follow Up. MD Rusch, BK Grunert, JR Saner, WW Dzwierzynski, HS Matloub. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Vol.106 No7. (December 2000). Pgs. 1451-1458. Follows the psychological adjustment of 57 children, ages 3 to 12, that sustained mutilating injuries in the face, upper or lower extremities. Injuries were from boating, lawn mowers, home accidents, and dog bites.

• Pediatric Trauma Caused by Personal Watercraft: A Ten Year Perspective. LE Rubin, PB Stein, C. DiScala, BE Grottkau. Journal of Pediatric Surgery. Vol.38 No.10. October 2003. Pgs.1525-1529. (Available from Elsevier - Science Direct). Investigates 66 pediatric patients ages 5 to 19 hospitalized from PWC accidents. between 1990 and 1999. Although it investigates non propeller accidents (PWC accidents) its lays good groundwork for a similar propeller study.

• Rehabilitation of Severely Injured Children. BM Gans and C DiScala. Western Journal of Medicine. Vol.154 No.5 (May 1991) Pgs. 566 - 568. Discusses typical injuries, methods and care of children with traumatic injuries.

There are some national databases that record traumatic injuries to children.

• National Trauma Registry for Children (NTRC) by the Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) Program. The University of Pittsburgh also has a site on the NTRC. It appears this database may not yet be operational?

• Tufts- New England Medical Center had a National Pediatric Trauma Registry (NPTR)collecting data on children and adolescents, 19 years old and younger. But it appears to be gone now? We think they collected data from about 1985 to 2002. (probably till the operation above was launched?). At least some of the older data appears to be for sale online. They collected information on injured children admitted to 76 trauma centers around the United States

• This article discusses the many separate trauma registries across the country and provides a link to a Power Point presentation of a survey of child trauma registries.

• A Major Trauma Outcome Study (MTOS) was ran back in the 1980's. Their may be some useful data in it.

• Children's Safety Network provides links to many injury databases and tools, some specific to children.

Other Resources

• IP Online (Injury Prevention Online, a safety journal that provides full text of many of its articles for free

• Trauma Link at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia provides several research tools in the area of children injuries.

Thoughts

Recent propeller safety meetings have pointed out the continued absence of boating activity participation data in terms of age, sex, length of time in boat/water, type of activity, etc. There are some general participation numbers ( x million people boat at least once a year and y million people boat more than ten times a year), but not specifics that would be required in a good safety analysis. We continue to browse around for children participation frequency and time data. I seem to recall seeing some of this in the past, but cant seem to find it now. If you are aware of any data of this nature for children or adults (exposure frequency and length of exposure) please contact us.

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