Exploring alternative injury severity measures to the Abbreviated Injury Scale

Measures of injury severity are a prerequisite for the study of injury and its causes. Injury severity scoring systems have been used to control for differences in casemix, quantifying the burden of injury, and estimating the use of resources to treat casualties.

The most widely used anatomic based measure of injury severity is the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS). However, the International Classification of Disease (ICD) is the standard taxonomy used by Australian health care system to record diagnoses. As an alternative to using AIS directly, mappings from ICD-9-CM to AIS have been successfully employed. With the introduction of ICD-10-AM this is no longer possible because the corresponding mappings between this revision of ICD and AIS have not yet been developed.

This paper will describe methods of assigning AIS values to ICD-10-AM injury codes. Measures of injury severity that are independent of the AIS will also be explored, including how these may address the contribution of the host, environment and the mechanism of injury, and the effect of multiple injuries on the casualty?s survival and long term recovery. This is a work in progress.