For blunt impact injury, patient mortality increases if multiple injuries are complicated with thoracic injury. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the prognosis value of ASCOT, a severity characterization of trauma. for thoracic patients injured from traffic accidents. This study aims to evaluate the prognosis value of ASCOT (A Severity Characteristics of Trauma) for thoracic patients injured from traffic accidents. 341 thoracic patients from 2261 cases of traffic injuries were assessed with RTS, AIS-ISS and ASCOT, and the prognotic value in predicting survival and death were compared with actual outcomes. ASCOT was satisfactory in the prognosis of survival patients, but not sensitive to death patients, eg there was a high incidence of mistaking death patients as survival. The causes of such aberration might be: (1) systemic errors of using foreign standard of trauma score to Chinese traffic wound; (2) deficiencies of trauma score system; (3) technical errors of one who performs trauma score assessment. It is necessary to establish a Chinese database of trauma material and to enact trauma score standards or rectification coefficients of weighting factor congruous with the China situation. (Author/publisher).
Abstract