-
The American surgeon · Apr 1995
Application of field triage guidelines by pre-hospital personnel: is mechanism of injury a valid guideline for patient triage?
- M E Cooper, D R Yarbrough, L Zone-Smith, T K Byrne, and E D Norcross.
- Department of Surgery, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston 29425.
- Am Surg. 1995 Apr 1;61(4):363-7.
AbstractWe prospectively investigated the appropriateness of Mechanism of Injury as an exclusive indicator for trauma center triage. For all patients transported to our level 1 trauma center, EMS personnel identified applicable American College of Surgeons' Committee on Trauma field triage guidelines. A total of 112 questionnaires were completed. Mechanism of injury was the only reason for trauma center transport in 29. Neither intubation nor emergent surgery was required in any of these patients, and all survived. Only two had an ISS > 15. The remaining 83 patients had an 11% mortality rate. Fourteen (16.9%) had ISS scores > 15. Defining an ISS of 16 or greater as severe injury, mechanism of injury alone had a positive predictive value of only 6.9%. Mechanism of injury may not, by itself, justify bypass of local hospitals in favor of trauma centers.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*,_underline_or**bold**. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>and subscript<sub>text</sub>. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3., hyphens-or asterisks*. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com) - Images can be included with:
 - For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote..