Emergency Medicine: Open Access
Open Access

Abstract

Effectiveness of TRISS to Evaluate Trauma Care in a Developing Country

Nadia Chaudhry, Syed Asghar Naqi and Ahmad Uzair Qureshi

Introduction: Trauma is a major health problem worldwide. Prediction of probability of survival in trauma patients is a basic requirement for evaluation of trauma care. Trauma and Injury Severity Score (TRISS) is used for scoring injury severity and have been suggested as a measure of the quality of trauma care.

Objective: The Objective of the study is to determine mortality, morbidity, hospital stay and other measures of severity using Trauma and Injury severity Score in penetrating and blunt patients.

Study design: Descriptive case study.

Setting: Surgical floor of Mayo Hospital Lahore for duration of 12 months from December 11, 2006 to December 10, 2007.

Methods: Data was collected from patients presenting in emergency fulfilling the inclusion criteria and were treated accordingly. Probability of survival was calculated for each patient using the TRISS. Patients were followed to evaluate morbidity and mortality. All the data calculated on specially designed proforma and evaluated using SPSS Software.

Results: Among 103 trauma patients, 89% of the patients were young males. Road traffic accidents (66%) and firearm injury (64%) were the main causes of blunt and penetrating trauma respectively. Probability of survival turned out of to be 0.9 whereas mortality rate was 7.4% and 9% for blunt and penetrating trauma patients respectively.

Conclusion: TRISS is quite helpful in determining probability of survival in trauma patients and should be used to evaluate the efficacy and quality assurance of emergency treatment in various hospitals of Pakistan and to identify various areas requiring improvement in trauma management.