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PECARN Pie: COVID and Child abuse

PECARN Pie: COVID and Child abuse

  • Jul 2022
  • 1 Chapter
  • 23 min

In this bonus COVID piece from Hippo Education and the PECARN Network, pediatric emergency physicians, Drs. Julia Magana and Jason Woods chat with Dr. Barbara Chaiyachati, a child abuse pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at University of Pennsylvania. They discuss a June 2022 article on child abuse during COVID, published in Pediatrics and titled “Emergency Department Child Abuse Evaluations During COVID-19: A Multicenter Study.” Dr. Magana was also a collaborator on this project and an author on the paper!

Faculty

  • Julia Magana, MD
  • Jason Woods, MD

Chapters

PECARN Pie: COVID and Child abuse

Pandemic-era emergency department child abuse evaluations fell overall, but the decline was concentrated in lower-severity injuries and school-aged children. In infants and toddlers under 2 years, severe presentations and skeletal survey use stayed steady, underscoring that abuse screening remained essential during COVID-19. Child Abuse Evaluations During COVID Overall ED abuse volume: Multicenter PECARN data showed a 19% drop in child abuse encounters during COVID-19, a headline decline that risks masking what did and did not actually change. Age-specific pattern shift: The reduction was concentrated in school-aged children, while abuse evaluations were unchanged in children under 2 years and in adolescents older than 13 years. Severity signal stability: Lower-severity abuse injuries fell the most across measures, but higher-severity injuries did not change, suggesting the pandemic altered detection more than the worst harm. Skeletal survey consistency: Skeletal survey rates did not change despite pandemic resource concerns, an important marker that clinicians maintained core screening practice under strain. Screening amid disruption: The key takeaway is not that abuse disappeared, but that presentation patterns shifted during COVID-19 and bedside suspicion still had to stay high. We get into the practice implications in the episode.