Abstract

Abdominal trauma in children is defined as the set of lesions produced in the abdomen, its contents or its walls, respecting or not the parietal continuity. The objective of this work is to contribute to the improvement of the care of the patients concerned in the pediatric surgery department of Bangui. We conducted a retrospective study from january 2012 to september 2016 on 86 files. The male sex (70.93%) predominated in all age groups. Etiologies were dominated by road traffic accidents (45.34%), falls (20.93%), firearms (19.76%) and weapons (3.48%).  Abdominal contusions were more frequent (70.93%). Most of the patients (59.3%) had surgery: the spleen was the most affected full organ (51.2%), the ileum was the most affected hollow organ in 12.2% of the case. Fractures (44.11%) were the extra-abdominal lesions associated with abdominal trauma. Complications were dominated by parietal suppurations in 60% of cases. Depending on the mode of discharge, there were 5 deaths, ie a mortality rate of 5.8%. Thus, the management of abdominal trauma in children remains difficult in our context where it is cruelly lacking the appropriate means to be able to make a precise lesional assessment in order to give the best treatment.