Citation

Nayduch DA, Moylan J, Rutledge R, Baker CC, Meredith W, Thomason M, Cunningham PG, Oller D, Azizkhan RG, Mason T. J. Trauma 1991; 31(4): 452-7; discussion 457-8.

Affiliation

North Carolina Trauma Registry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham 27710.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1991, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

2020031

Abstract

The Pediatric Trauma Score (PTS) has been identified as the only accurate and adequate means of predicting outcome in pediatric trauma. In answer to the increasing number of trauma patients arriving at local hospitals, the ability of the adult Trauma Score (TS) to predict pediatric trauma outcome was tested. Of the total 2,604 pediatric trauma cases in the North Carolina State Trauma Registry, 441 had both a PTS and TS available for analysis. The primary measures of outcome were emergency department and hospital dispositions. Logistic regression demonstrated that TS (R2 = 0.50) was a stronger predictor of pediatric outcome and PTS (R2 = 0.35) for emergency department disposition and TS (R2 = 0.63) with PTS (R2 = 0.51) for hospital disposition. The correlation between TS and PTS was high (R = 0.8). Stepwise discriminant analysis demonstrated that TS was the stronger predictor of outcome and the PTS added only 9% (partial R2 = 0.09) more accuracy to TS for emergency department disposition and only 6% (partial R2 = 0.06) for hospital disposition. The results of this research demonstrate that TS is a useful method of predicting outcome in pediatric trauma. The use of both scores for each patient does not increase the predictive value of the scores.