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.