Accuracy of PECARN, CATCH, and CHALICE head injury decision rules in children: a prospective cohort study.

Background: Clinical decision rules can help to determine the need for CT imaging in children with head injuries. We aimed to validate three clinical decision rules (PECARN, CATCH, and CHALICE) in a large sample of children.

Methods: In this prospective observational study, we included children and adolescents (aged <18 years) with head injuries of any severity who presented to the emergency departments of ten Australian and New Zealand hospitals.

Rheumatic Heart Disease-Attributable Mortality at Ages 5-69 Years in Fiji: A Five-Year, National, Population-Based Record-Linkage Cohort Study.

Background: Rheumatic heart disease (RHD) is considered a major public health problem in developing countries, although scarce data are available to substantiate this. Here we quantify mortality from RHD in Fiji during 2008-2012 in people aged 5-69 years.

Methods And Findings: Using 1,773,999 records derived from multiple sources of routine clinical and administrative data, we used probabilistic record-linkage to define a cohort of 2,619 persons diagnosed with RHD, observed for all-cause mortality over 11,538 person-years.

A prospective observational study to assess the diagnostic accuracy of clinical decision rules for children presenting to emergency departments after head injuries (protocol): the Australasian Paediatric Head Injury Rules Study (APHIRST).

Background: Head injuries in children are responsible for a large number of emergency department visits. Failure to identify a clinically significant intracranial injury in a timely fashion may result in long term neurodisability and death. Whilst cranial computed tomography (CT) provides rapid and definitive identification of intracranial injuries, it is resource intensive and associated with radiation induced cancer.

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

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.