J Korean Soc Emerg Med.  2006 Apr;17(2):124-137.

A Preliminary Application of an Emergency Department-based Indepth Injury Surveillance System

• Kim TY
• Shin SD
• Suh GJ
• Song KJ
• Choi WJ
• Jung ST

Abstract

PURPOSE: We tried to apply an Emergency-Departmentbased In-depth Injury Surveillance System designed on the basis of the International Classification of External Causes of Injuries (ICECI).
METHODS
We registered prospectively all victims presenting with an injury from August 2004 to February 2005 at a local emergency center with 530 inpatient beds and 24 emergency beds. We evaluated the distribution and the proportion by injury-related factors and compared the severity by using the New Injury Severity Score (NISS), the Revised Trauma Score (RTS), the International Classification of Disease-10-based Injury Severity Score (ICISS).
RESULTS
The total number of cases was 2,994 and 58.4% of those involved male. Accidental injuries were much greater in number (88.2%) than intentional injuries (10.7%). By mechanism, falls, motor vehicle accidents, piercing/cutting/biting, burns, poisoning/chemical, and other blunt injuries accounted for 28.3%, 14.0%, 13.8%, 3.9%, 2.8%, and 21.5%, respectively, of all injuries. The most common activity was unpaid work (27.3%) and the most common place was a home/residence or institute (44.1%). By severity based on the NISS, mild (below 8 points), moderate (9 to 24 points), and severe (above 25 points) injuries accounted for 89.6%, 9.6%, and 0.8%, respectively, of all injuries. The ICISS and the NISS showed a strongly negative correlation (correlation coefficient= -0.656, p<0.001), and the ICISS and the RTS showed a strongly positive correlation (correlation coefficient = 0.518, p<0.001).
CONCLUSION
The In-depth EDISS based on the ICECI was a useful tool for the surveillance of injury-related factors and was a feasible method for measuring and comparing injury severity.

Keyword

Injuries; Surveillance; Emergencies

MeSH Terms

Burns
Classification
Emergencies*
Humans
Injury Severity Score
Inpatients
Male
Motor Vehicles
Prospective Studies
Wounds, Nonpenetrating