Trauma-registry survival outcome follow up: 30 days is mandatory and appears sufficient

Introduction Thirty-day in-hospital mortality is a common outcome measure in trauma-registry research and benchmarking. However, this does not include deaths after hospital discharge before 30 days or late beyond since the injury. To evaluate reliability of measure, we assessed timing causes death during first year major blunt trauma patients treated at single tertiary center. Methods We used Helsinki Trauma Registry to identify severely injured (NISS ? 16) 2006 2015. The Population Register center Finland provided data for Statistics cause information from certificates. Disease, work-related disease, medical treatment, unknown were considered as non-trauma related deaths. divided 1-year study period into following three categories: (Group 1), but within 2), 31 365 admission 3). Results included 3557 with median NISS 29. Altogether, 21.8% (776/3557) died Of these non-survivors, 12.7% (450) Group 1, 4.0% (141) 2, 5.2% (185) 3. Non-traumatic directly injury increased substantially time 2.0% (9/450) 13.5% (19/141) 35.7% (66/185) Conclusion proper that measures survival severe trauma. applying only instead actual 30-day may exclude non-survivors who die another facility day 30. This could result over-optimistic benchmarking results. On other hand, extending follow-up increases rate non-traumatic By combining different registries, it possible address challenge current caused by lack follow up.