ABSTRACT
Clinical research in the setting of pediatric trauma, including the assessment of pediatric health status and quality of life, has numerous intrinsic difficulties. Despite these difficulties, rigorous patient-oriented clinical research focusing on issues germane to the injured child is a prerequisite for the timely evolution of clinical practice in this area. New clinical research methodologies present exciting opportunities to explore issues related to these outcomes. The presence of an in-house pediatric surgeon was associated with a lower rate of mortality among severely injured children. A large prospective epidemiological study of outcome after adult trauma utilized a similar adult quality-of-life measure, the Quality of Well-Being scale, and documented profound perturbations in quality of life at 12–18 months after major injury. The magnitude of dysfunction has likely been underestimated by more traditional measures of patient outcome and that quality of life measures have an important role in the long-term assessment of patients who have sustained traumatic injury.
