Which elements of hospital-based clinical decision support tools for the assessment and management of children with head injury can be adapted for use by paramedics in prehospital care? A systematic mapping review and narrative synthesis.

OBJECTIVE: Hospital-based clinical decision tools support clinician decision-making when a child presents to the emergency department with a head injury, particularly regarding CT scanning. However, there is no decision tool to support prehospital clinicians in deciding which head-injured children can safely remain at scene. This study aims to identify clinical decision tools, or constituent elements, which may be adapted for use in prehospital care.

DESIGN: Systematic mapping review and narrative synthesis.

DATA SOURCES: Searches were conducted using MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL and AMED.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods or systematic review research that included a clinical decision support tool for assessing and managing children with head injury.

DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: We systematically identified all in-hospital clinical decision support tools and extracted from these the clinical criteria used in decision-making. We complemented this with a narrative synthesis.

RESULTS: Following de-duplication, 887 articles were identified. After screening titles and abstracts, 710 articles were excluded, leaving 177 full-text articles. Of these, 95 were excluded, yielding 82 studies. A further 14 studies were identified in the literature after cross-checking, totalling 96 analysed studies. 25 relevant in-hospital clinical decision tools were identified, encompassing 67 different clinical criteria, which were grouped into 18 categories.

CONCLUSION: Factors that should be considered for use in a clinical decision tool designed to support paramedics in the assessment and management of children with head injury are: signs of skull fracture; a large, boggy or non-frontal scalp haematoma neurological deficit; Glasgow Coma Score less than 15; prolonged or worsening headache; prolonged loss of consciousness; post-traumatic seizure; amnesia in older children; non-accidental injury; drug or alcohol use; and less than 1 year old. Clinical criteria that require further investigation include mechanism of injury, clotting impairment/anticoagulation, vertigo, length of time of unconsciousness and number of vomits.