Pre-hospital data as risk predictors of seriousness among traumatically injured patients

Background Currently many hospitals activate a trauma team with a predefined large team of health care professionals as a response to a trauma call. For hospitals with limited resources, this is a demanding process, which weakens the overall hospital performance by allocating considerable resources to the trauma room. Most trauma calls are based on trauma schemes scores from a combination of physiologicanatomic injuryand injury mechanism criteria. In the search for indicators which might be used for a more differentiated hospital response, the aim of this study was to investigate the relative importance of pre-hospital variables in identifying “high risk” patients.