Objective:

To determine if the application of the rules of the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) reduces the use of simple skull tomography in patients with mild head trauma within the first 24 hours, to determine the sensitivity and specificity of the PECARN rules Place: Emergency Service of the Hospital del Niño” Dr. Luis Ovidio Aliaga Uria”

Participants:

56 patients who came to the emergency service for mild head injury.

Measurements:

all the variables that include the PECARN rules was evaluated.

Results:

A comparison was made in relation to the number of pre and post implementation of the PECARN rules, showing a decrease from 78.4% (69/88) to 66.6% (36/56) post-PECARN (p = 0.01), and decreased significantly for low- risk patients. Post PECARN, 56 patients were included, 15 patients (26.7%) were divided into high risk, 100% tomography was performed, showing brain lesions in 100%, 21 patients (37.5%) as medium risk patients, it was decided to perform tomography in the 100%, of which 42.8% had brain lesions. Among the patients with low risk, 20 patients (35.7%) were classified, none of them underwent a simple skull tomography due to the low risk. It was evidenced in this study, the sensitivity of this clinical decision rule was 100%, the specificity was 62.5% and the negative predictive value was 100%.

Conclusions:

the critical use of PECARN rules in the emergency service decreased the number of simple skull tomographies by 11.8%, a 100% sensitivity, 62.5% specificity, and 100% negative predictive value of the PECARN rules were evidenced.

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