OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of major trauma on individual and population health. METHODS Data from a regional trauma registry were used, including all trauma fatalities and nonfatal severely injured patients (injury severity score >15) in 1999 and 2000. The impact of fatalities was expressed in terms of years of life lost (YLL). The impact of severe injury on survivors was expressed in ter...

BACKGROUND Avalanches are a significant cause of winter recreational fatalities in mountain regions. The purpose of this study was to determine the relative contributions of trauma and asphyxia to avalanche deaths. METHODS We reviewed all avalanche fatalities between 1984 and 2005 that had been investigated by the offices of the British Columbia Coroners Service and the Chief Medical Examiner...

To determine whether the injury mortality prediction (IMP) statistically outperforms the trauma mortality prediction model (TMPM) as a predictor of mortality.The TMPM is currently the best trauma score method, which is based on the anatomic injury. Its ability of mortality prediction is superior to the injury severity score (ISS) and to the new injury severity score (NISS). However, despite its...

The identification of major trauma patients before arrival in hospital allows the activation of an appropriate trauma response. The Wessex triage tool (WTT) uses a combination of anatomical injury assessment and physiological criteria to identify patients with major trauma suitable for triage direct to a major trauma centre (MTC), and has been adopted by the South-West Peninsula Trauma Network ...

OBJECTIVES The Injury Severity Score (ISS) has served as the standard summary measure of anatomic injury for more than 20 years. Nevertheless, the ISS has an idiosyncrasy that both impairs its predictive power and complicates its calculation. We present here a simple modification of the ISS called the New Injury Severity Score (NISS), which significantly outperforms the venerable but dated ISS ...

BACKGROUND Trauma-related mortality can be lowered by efficient prehospital care. Less is known about whether gender influences the prehospital trauma care provided. The aim of this study was to explore gender-related differences in prehospital trauma care of severely injured trauma patients, with a special focus on triage, transportation, and interventions. METHODS We performed a retrospecti...

Little is known about the true extent and severity of overuse injuries in sport, largely because of methodological challenges involved in recording them. This study assessed the prevalence of overuse injuries among Norwegian athletes from five sports using a newly developed method designed specifically for this purpose. The Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center Overuse Injury Questionnaire was dis...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the association between the time taken to make a decision to go to surgery and gender, ethnicity, years in profession, experience of trauma team training, experience of structured trauma courses and trauma in the trauma team, as well as use of closed-loop communication and leadership styles during trauma team training. DESIGN In situ trauma team training. The patient...

BACKGROUND Triage is the process of classifying patients according to injury severity and determining the priority for further treatment. Although the term "major trauma" represents the reference against which over- and undertriage rates are calculated, its definition is inconsistent in the current literature. This study aimed to investigate the effects of different definitions of major trauma ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the performance of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) based injury severity score, ICISS, when applied to two versions of the 10th edition of ICD, ICD-10 and ICD-10-AM. DESIGN ICISS was assessed on its ability to predict threat to life using logistic regression modelling. Models used ICISS and age as predictors and survival as the outcome. SETTING Austral...