Accidental Physical Trauma in Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs: A Scoping Review

BACKGROUND: Children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) may be at greater risk for accidental physical trauma. Interventions should be informed by the literature indicating incident characteristics and at-risk subpopulations. OBJECTIVE: To conduct a scoping review of accidental physical trauma in CYSHCN to characterize published literature and identify gaps. DATA SOURCES: Peer-reviewed literature within CINAHL, Embase, and PubMed, 1998 to February 2021. STUDY ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Studies that included individuals younger than 19 with special health care need(s) with accidental injuries classified as trauma. STUDY APPRAISAL AND SYNTHESIS METHODS: The study team extracted: research method, author field, special health care needs, geographic scope, author country, demographics, incident characteristics, and injury characteristics. RESULTS: We included 85 articles from an initial yield of 10,481. Pediatrics (32%) was the most-represented field among authors published on this topic. Publications most often considered developmental conditions (77.7%), including Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD). Studies differed in how often they reported demographic characteristics: gender (96.5%); social determinants of health/socioeconomic status (41.2%) or race and ethnicity (25.9%). Few articles included injury time of day (10.6%) and day of week (2.4%); 40% did not include information about the place of injury. IMITATIONS: Our search term development focused on diagnosis rather than need; we did not search reference lists or grey literature. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF KEY FINDINGS: This review reveals key gaps in the literature pertaining to incident characteristics and place of injury for CYSHCN. Those advising families and/or planning interventions focused on mitigating risk for CYSHCN have limited evidence upon which to rely for certain conditions.