Material and methods
The present meta-analysis is an extensive search conducted in Medline (via PubMed), Cinahl (via Ebsco), Scopus, Web of Sciences, from 2009 till the end of December 2020. The search was performed based on the keywords related to decrease use of CT scan, head injuries, blunt head trauma (BHT) combined with accuracy, Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) OR Clinical Decision Support Tool (CDST). The studies analyzing the diagnostic accuracy of PECARN rule in children younger than 18 years of age presenting to the emergency departments with minor blunt head trauma were included in the present meta-analysis. The studies with patients having Glasgow Coma Scale Score (GCS) of > 13 were included. Those studies where PECARN rule was applied were included in the meta-analysis. The trauma patients above 18 years with a GCS < 13 were excluded from the present meta-analysis. Each study was categorized as patients < 2 yrs of age and patients > 2 yrs of age. Table.1summarizes the demographic details of the studies included from the search query of the Medline database with the considered variables.
The present study’s primary focus was to assess the efficacy of PECARN decision rules in children with minor blunt head trauma. To rule out the efficacy of the PECARN rule; sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (npv), and diagnostic odds ratio’s were assessed with the help of true positive (TP), false positive (FP), true negative (TN), false negative (FN) values as mentioned in Table 2.