Abstract
A population-based study was conducted to clarify the relationship between the pre-hospital findings and the outcome in trauma victims. The number of patients carried to hospitals by ambulance per year (April 2006 through March 2007) in the Hiroshima District (population approx. 1,340,000) was 14,091. The patients were classified as; group A (positive initial assessment in the physiological domain), group B (no findings on initial assessment, but positive findings after a rapid trauma survey in the anatomic domain), group C (positive findings only on scene size-up in the mechanistic domain), and group D (no findings for Load & Go). Questionnaires were sent to hospitals asking about the outcome of the victims on 14th day after the injury, and were returned in 12,595 cases (89.4%). Fifty-one victims died within 14 days, and 40 of them were in group A. The number of victims who died, experienced multiple traumas, or both, was 90/355 (25.4%) in group A, 14/216 (6.0%) in group B, 5/357 (1.4 %) in group C, and 2/11,724 (0.02%) in group D. The initial assessment is thus considered to be the most important predictor and a rapid trauma survey is the second most important predictor of the outcome in trauma victims.
