Injury Severity Scoring and Applications to Combat Casualty Care

Abstract : Injury Scales have wide applications to management of trauma victims in civilian and military settings. They are used for epidemological studies, prediction of outcome, triage and monitoring, assessment of clinical modalities, and for evaluation of patient management. This paper is a product of over ten years of research by the authors toward developing and validating indices that measure injury severity. In this paper three indices and military applications are described. The indices are the Injury Severity Score, the Trauma Score, and the Global Index. The Injury Severity Score is based on injury descriptions in terms of anatomical lesions. The Trauma Score is based on assessments of physiological responses soon after injury. The Global Index characterizes patient condition in the intensive care unit using measures of organ function.