Trauma score

Scoring systems have been developed in trauma for:

• Rapid fi eld triage to direct the patient to appropriate levels of care.

• Quality assurance.

• Developing and improving trauma care systems by categorising patients and identifying problems within the systems.

• Making comparisons between groups from different hospitals, in the same hospital over time, and/or undergoing different treatments.

The Injury severity score (ISS) is a severity scoring for patients based on the anatomical injuries sustained. The Revised trauma score (RTS) utilizes measures of physiological abnormality to predict survival (see table opposite). A combination of ISS and RTS-TRISS-was developed to overcome the shortcomings of anatomical or physiological scoring alone. The TRISS methodology uses ISS, RTS, patient age, and whether the injury was blunt or penetrating to provide a measure of the probability of survival.

Injury severity score

Use AIS90 (Abbreviated Injury Score 1990) dictionary to score injury. Identify highest abbreviated injury scale score for each of the following:

• Head and neck.

• Abdomen and pelvic contents.

• Bony pelvis and limbs.

• Face.

• Chest.

• Body surface.

Add together the squares of the three highest area scores.

Revised trauma score