Abdominal injuries in children. The value of emergency abdominal ultrasonography

Abdominal injuries are frequent in children. Their early assessment is the best guarantee for an accurate management. Seventy children with abdominal trauma were evaluated by early ultrasonography. This investigation found abnormalities in 52 patients, with hematic peritoneal effusion in 26 cases, renal lesion in 20 cases, hepatic lesion in ten cases, splenic lesion in seven cases and a lesion involving liver, spleen and pancreas in one case. Based on these results, surgery was performed in six cases. The remaining cases were simply supervised with a good prognosis. Ultrasonography represents the main investigation in children's abdominal trauma, allowing an early, efficient and non-costly morphological diagnosis. Computerized tomography (CT) scan has some particular indications.