Canadian Benchmarks in Trauma

Background: Benchmarks are used in trauma care for program evaluation, quality improvement, and research. National outcome benchmarks relevant to the Canadian trauma population need to be defined for evaluation of trauma care in Canada. The purpose of this study was to derive survival probabilities associated with trauma diagnoses using International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes.

Methods: All patients admitted to an acute care hospital with nonpenetrating trauma and submitted to the National Trauma Registry of Canada between 1994 through 2000 inclusively were included in analyses. Both inclusive and exclusive survival risk ratios (SRRs) were calculated for groups of ICD-9 injury codes between 800 to 959.

Results: For the study period, there were 1,003,905 and 803,776 eligible trauma patients used to calculate inclusive SRRs and exclusive SRRs, respectively. Survival probabilities for injuries are given according to ICD-9 codes.

Conclusion: This is the first study to define national survival benchmarks for the Canadian trauma population. These results can be used to assess survival of patients using the ICISS [(ICD-9) based Injury Severity Score (ISS)] methodology. With regular updates, these data can further be developed for continual trauma outcome assessment, quality improvement, and research into trauma care in Canada.