A Descriptive Study of the New Injury Severity Score (NISS) Based on the Traffic Accident Injury Pyramid

Shin, Sang Do; Rhee, Joong Eui; Suh, Gil Joon; Kim, Jae Yong; Sung, John; Whang, Eun Hee; Whang, Seung Sik

Abstract

PURPOSE
This study was conducted to construct traffic-accident-related injury pyramid based on the New Injury Severity Score (NISS).
METHODS
We constructed injury episodes to use the Traffic Accident Insurance database (1997~2001) and calculated the NISS by Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS). All episodes were classified into three groups by using the NISS: minor group (1~10), moderate group (11~25), and severe group (25~75). Seventy-five points were assigned to all death episodes. We constructed a traffic-accident-related injury pyramid by using an NISS criterion. We compared frequencies and percentiles of episodes in the NISS-based injury pyramid.
RESULTS
The number of episodes was 2,012,135. Of these, 1,331,599 episodes involved males, and the other 680,536 episodes involved females. The number of death episodes was 2,091 in 1997, 1,971 in 1998, 2,430 in 1999, 2,546 in 2000 and 141 in 2002. The mean NISS was 6.89+/-6.31, and the percents for the minor group, the moderate group, and the severe group were 85.58%, 13.39%, and 1.03%, respectively. The percent of males in the severe group was higher than that of females by 2.43 times. The percent of older persons (>46 yrs) in the severe and moderate groups was higher than that of young adults (16-45 yrs) The percents of belt-unattached episodes, pedestrian episodes, and separated-car accident episodes in the severe group were higher than those of bet-attached episodes, passenger or driver episodes, and car-to-car accident episodes. The mean out-patient-department follow-up period and the mean loss rate of labor ability increased from the minor group through the moderate group to the severe group.
CONCLUSION
We confirmed the characteristics of the traffic-accident-related injury pyramid.