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Existing clinical decision tools for prehospital trauma triage are imperfect and do not achieve American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma goals for undertriage (5%) or overtriage (35%).
Using clinical information from nearly 5000 adult trauma patients transported to trauma centers by ambulance in the Netherlands, researchers developed and validated a model containing eight variables to predict an Injury Severity Score (ISS) >15. The authors defined undertriage as a patient with ISS >15 taken to a level 2 or 3 trauma center and overtriage as a less-injured patient taken to a level 1 trauma center, even if it was the closest hospital. Compared to reported rates with other triage protocols, the model improved undertriage from 22%–44% to …