Chest Trauma: The Role of Injury Severity Scoring

Traumatic injury varies so widely between patients that it becomes critical to have a basis for standardizing care and quality outcome efforts. Methods to describe severity of traumatic injuries have been in evolution over the past 60 years, and have led the development of other scoring systems which now are used across all medical specialties. A variety of scoring systems have been developed, based on anatomic and/or physiologic grading. Anatomic grading has been found useful in helping determine management of abdominal injuries, but are not discrete enough to manage chest injuries on a real-time basis. However, they are vital for assessing treatment outcomes, and are the basis for quality improvement programs.