Use of Multiple Injury Profiles to enhance terror related injury statistics

Background: Multiple injuries, a common condition in terror related trauma, are often associated with increased severity and worse outcomes when compared with isolated injuries. ISS does not provide a good representation of severity in these complex injuries. MIP methodology has been proposed in past APHA meetings and in the literature for reporting road injury data, yet its applicability for other injury types has not been demonstrated.

Aim: To demonstrate the benefits of using multiple injury profiles (MIP), on terror related injury data.

Methods: Multiple Injury Profiles are defined. Trauma registry data 1/10/2000-31/12/2005 are used to provide the frequency distribution of these profiles in patients with terror related injuries. A report of outcomes when using MIP is compared with reports that use other approaches for data coding. Injury severity score (ISS), length of stay and inpatient death are reported.

Results: 2135 terror related casualties were included. The use of multiple injury profiles revealed diagnoses that would otherwise be unrecorded, being secondary. Furthermore, using primary injury methods, 42% of patients with head injuries would have an ISS of 25+. Using MIP, showed that in patients with additional abdominal injuries 56% have ISS 25+. Presenting data using primary diagnosis methods, would result in the loss of this piece of information.

Conclusions:. Multiple injury profiles (MIP) improve the ability to present injury profiles of terror casualties. The use of MIP facilitates the identification of all patients with a specific injury, even if secondary, providing a better description of the full pattern of injury