Comparison of Injury Severity Score, Glasgow Coma Scale, and Revised Trauma Score in Predicting the Mortality and Prolonged ICU Stay of Traumatic Young Children: A Cross-Sectional Retrospective Study

Yii-Ting Huang; Ying-Hsien Huang; Ching-Hua Hsieh; Chao-Jui Li; I-Min Chiu

doi:10.1155/2019/5453624

Comparison of Injury Severity Score, Glasgow Coma Scale, and Revised Trauma Score in Predicting the Mortality and Prolonged ICU Stay of Traumatic Young Children: A Cross-Sectional Retrospective Study

Emerg Med Int. 2019 Dec 1:2019:5453624. doi: 10.1155/2019/5453624. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Yii-Ting Huang¹, Ying-Hsien Huang^{2

3}, Ching-Hua Hsieh⁴, Chao-Jui Li¹, I-Min Chiu^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Emergency Medicine, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
² Department of Pediatrics, Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Puzi City, Taiwan.
³ Department of Pediatrics, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Plastic Surgery, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chang Gung University and College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
⁵ Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Abstract

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to examine the capacity of commonly used trauma scoring systems such as the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), Injury Severity Score (ISS), and Revised Trauma Score (RTS) to predict outcomes in young children with traumatic injuries.

Methods: This retrospective study was conducted for the period from 2009 to 2016 in Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Medical Hospital, a level I trauma center. We included all children under the age of 6 years admitted to the hospital via the emergency department with any traumatic injury and compared the trauma scores of GCS, ISS, and RTS on patients' outcome. The primary outcomes were mortality and prolonged Intensive Care Unit (ICU) stay, with the latter defined as an ICU stay longer than 14 days. The secondary outcome was the hospital length of stay (HLOS). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was also adopted with the value of the area under the ROC curve (AUC) for comparing trauma score prediction with patient mortality. Cutoff values from each trauma score for mortality prediction were also measured by determining the point along the ROC curve where Youden's index was maximum.

Results: We included a total of 938 patients in this study, with a mean age of 3.1 ± 1.82 years. The mortality rate was 0.9%, and 93 (9.9%) patients had a prolonged ICU stay. An elevated ISS (34 ± 19.9 vs. 5 ± 5.1, p=0.004), lower GCS (8 ± 5.0 vs. 15 ± 1.3, p=0.006), and lower RTS (5.58 ± 1.498 vs. 7.64 ± 0.640, p=0.006) were all associated with mortality. All three scores were considered to be independent risk factors of mortality and prolonged ICU stay and had a linear correlation with increased HLOS. With regard to predicting mortality, ISS has the highest AUC value (ISS: 0.975; GCS: 0.864; and RTS: 0.899). The prediction cutoff values of ISS, GCS, and RTS on mortality were 15, 11, and 7, respectively.

Conclusion: Regarding traumatic injuries in young children, worse ISS, GCS, and RTS were all associated with increased mortality, prolonged ICU stay, and longer hospital LOS. Of these scoring systems, ISS was the best at predicting mortality.