Aims:

To describe the incidence and main characteristics of pressure injuries in pediatric patients in intensive care units and some variables related to the methodology for pressure injury incidence calculation.

Background:

Pressure injuries (PI) represent a serious health problem with major consequences

for the patients affected. Neonatal and pediatric ICU (NICU) (PICU) care for patients at high risk of developing pressure injuries. There is a paucity of systematic data on the incidence and defining variables of injuries in PICU and NICU.

Methods:

We conducted a systematic review of the literature published between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2016, including articles reporting data on the incidence of these injuries in PICU or NICU. We included studies reporting data on pressure injuries related to position, with or without injuries related to medical devices; we excluded studies which only reported data on pressure injuries related to medical devices.

Findings:

We identified 27 articles with a total of 53 reports on incidence and information on 15,587 patients. In the case of PICU, the mean incidence of PI was 19.4% in prospective studies that did not implicitly include PI related to medical devices, and 16.97% in those which included pressure injuries related both to medical devices and position. For NICU, we found values of 3.9% and 23.58% respectively.

Conclusions:

The results of this study shed light on the incidence of pressure injuries in pediatric intensive care patients and highlight aspects related to the methodology used for the calculation of PI incidence.

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