Risk and Injury Severity of Obese Child Passengers in Motor Vehicle Crashes

描述（由申请人提供）：儿童肥胖的患病率大幅上升，因此在美国被认为是一个重要的公共卫生问题。机动车碰撞是最大的单一风险，并继续是全世界儿童死亡的主要原因。使用标准尺寸的儿童假人对mvc中的儿童乘员伤害机制进行了大量研究。因此，目前的儿童约束系统针对儿童的标准尺寸进行了优化。然而，肥胖儿童对于特定年龄的儿童安全座椅来说太重了。此外，肥胖儿童在mvc中的风险和损伤机制尚不清楚。本研究的目的是通过计算模型和模拟来调查肥胖儿童在mvc后的风险和损伤严重程度。我们假设肥胖儿童的损伤程度会高于非肥胖儿童。我们将利用最先进的建模技术和医学成像处理技术，开发生物医学计算模型来代表不同BMI范围的3岁和6岁肥胖儿童。然后，我们将在各种MVC场景下使用肥胖和标准假人模型进行计算碰撞模拟。预期结果是对包括头部、颈部和胸部在内的局部身体损伤进行定量风险评估。肥胖儿童假人的结果将与标准假人的结果进行比较，以检查儿童肥胖对MVC损伤的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The prevalence of childhood obesity has been substantially increasing thus it is considered an important public health issue in the United States. Motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) are the single greatest risk and continue to be the leading cause of death for children worldwide. Considerable studies have been conducted on child occupant injury mechanisms in MVCs using standard size child dummies. Consequentially, current child restraint systems were optimized for the standard size of children. However, obese children are too heavy for age-specific child safety seats. Moreover, risk and injury mechanisms of obese children in MVCs are still unknown. The goal of the proposed study is to investigate the risk and injury severity of obese children following MVCs through computational modeling and simulation. We hypothesize that injury levels of obese children will be greater than those of non-obese children. We will develop biofidelic computational models to represent 3- and 6-years-old obese children in various BMI ranges using state-of-the-art modeling techniques and medical imaging processing. We will then perform computational crash simulations with the obese and standard dummy models under a variety of MVC scenarios. The expected outcomes are quantitative risk assessments of regional body injuries including head, neck, and thorax. The results from obese child dummies will be compared to those from the standard dummies to examine the effects of childhood obesity on MVC injuries. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Application of the age- and body habitus-specific computational models will reveal the regional body injuries of obese children under dynamic loading conditions. This effort will advance our understanding of the injury mechanisms for obese children in MVCs. The outcomes from the model simulations would be used to assess and design child restraint devices to improve road safety for the rapidly increasing obese child population.