The West Virginia medical journal
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Comparative Study
A comparison of neural networks for computing predicted probability of survival for trauma victims.
TRISS is a statistical method for predicting the probability of survival of trauma victims. Analysis of data from the Trauma Registry at Charleston Area Medical Center showed that only 48% of the trauma fatalities in the 5-year period 1992-1996 were correctly predicted by TRISS. Trauma practitioners from other Trauma Centers report similar problems with TRISS. ⋯ The predicted number using TRISS was 86 for a relative error of 27.7%. Since effective quality improvement for trauma care depends on accurately identifying cases that fall outside the expected results, a more accurate predictive tool allows a more focused review of those significant cases, thus conserving resources without compromising quality. Neural Networks appear to be a predictive tool that can provide probability of survival estimates that are more accurate than TRISS.