The Most Common Tools to Measure Trauma Severity: A review Study

Abstract

Introduction: Due to the increasing mortality rate from trauma, determining the severity of injury has a very important role in the prognosis of the injured person. On the other hand, the quality of medical care provided to the casualties is evaluated using the Trauma Scoring System. Various scales were used to determine the trauma severity of injured. In this study, the most commonly used tools are investigated.

Methods: This review was conducted by searching throughout the Persian data bases of Magiran, Barakat, SID and English databases of Scopus, Web of sciences, PubMed, and Google scholar. To conduct the search, the following keywords were used: "Severity of Trauma", "Trauma scoring", and "Trauma Scoring System" without considering any time intervals. Our early search resulted in 2125 articles. Finally, 17 articles were analyzed and different functions of traumatic assessment tools were compared and studied.

Results: Traumatic assessment methods vary based on the anatomical and physiological parameters and composition of these two methods. In this study, the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS), Injury Severity Score (ISS), and New Injury Severity Score (NISS) were considered as anatomical parameters; Revised Trauma Score (RTS) as physiological parameters; Trauma Score Injury Severity Score (TRISS) and A Severity Characterization of Trauma (ASCOST) were mentioned as a hybrid ranking system.

Conclusion: Application of accurate scientific evaluations in trauma severity assessment methods and application of each method in its appropriate position would result in appropriate improvements in the development of trauma care.  In addition, these systems can play an important role in providing care to patients with traumatic injuries in the present and future.