Sir, The recording of a patients respiratory rate is an integral part of trauma scoring. Yet 10% of MTOS patients are excluded from TRISS analysis, most because one or more of the revized trauma score variables has not been assessed or recorded (Cope et al., 1989). We should like to draw attention to a respiratory rate monitor (available from Simonsen and Weel Ltd). The unit detects respiration...

The actual survival of patients treated following trauma in four Scottish Teaching hospitals during five years was compared with predicted survival according to TRISS analysis. The data were analysed according to the seniority of the Accident and Emergency (A&E) doctor treating each patient. The group of patients treated by a consultant had a significantly better outcome (p < 0.05) than the gro...

Should healthy, middle-aged women receive precautionary mammograms? Should trauma surgeons use the popular TRISS score to predict the likelihood of patient survival? These are examples of questions confronting us when we decide whether to use a yes/no prediction. In order to trust a prediction we must show that it is more valuable than would be our best guess of the future in the absence of the...

9.0 g/dl, patients were transfused on average at 6.8 and 7.9 g/dl, respectively, and all 13 protocol deviations in the liberal group occurred when patients with a hemoglobin less than 9.0 g/dl were not transfused (compared to all 7 deviations in the restrictive group occurring when transfusions were given to patients with hemoglobin greater than 7.0 g/dl). Patients in the liberal group received...

BACKGROUND More than a decade ago, the city of Philadelphia began allowing police transport of penetrating trauma patients. OBJECTIVES   The objective was to determine the relation between prehospital mode of transport (police department [PD] vs. Philadelphia Fire Department (PFD) emergency medical services [EMS]) and survival in subjects with proximal penetrating trauma. METHODS The author...

OBJECTIVE To measure interobserver variation in recording injury from case notes and its effect on calculating injury severity scores (ISS) from identical data and predicting probabilities of survival by using the combined trauma and injury severity score (TRISS). DESIGN Observer variation study using injury severity scoring and subsequent calculation of probability of survival based on combi...