Mortality of patients with head injury and extracranial injury treated in trauma centers.

The types and severity of injuries of 49, 143 patients from 95 trauma centers were coded according to the 1985 version of the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS). This paper analyzes the causes, incidence, and mortality in 16, 524 patients (33.6% of the trauma centre patients) with injury to the brain or skull and compares them to patients without head injury. Head injury is thus associated with more deaths (3, 010 vs.1, 972) than all other injuries and causes almost as many deaths (2, 040 vs.2, 170) as extracranial injuries. Because of its high mortality, head injury is the single largest contributor to trauma centre deaths.