The National Pediatric Trauma Registry (NPTR) was formed to describe pediatric trauma in terms of its etiology, methods of treatment, and functional outcomes. Centered at Tufts-New England School of Medicine, and endorsed by the American Pediatric Surgical Association, the NPTR data archived here represent 45,333 children under age 19 who were admitted to one of 66 American or Canadian trauma centers between October 1988 and December 1994.

The NPTR has five aims: (1) to document causes and outcomes of pediatric trauma serious enough to require hospitalization; (2) to describe resulting impairments; (3) to assess efficacy of acute intervention; (4) to estimate needs for rehabilitation services; and (5) to identify areas for preventive intervention.

The National Pediatric Trauma Registry has a unique focus on the functional status of surviving children discharged from acute care. For example, nine specific domains of individual functioning are measured and included in this dataset. These domains include vision, hearing, speech, self-feeding, bathing, dressing, walking, cognition, and behavior. Moreover, 267 variables capture the duration and sequencing of children's experience with trauma, trauma severity, treatment and treatment outcomes.