Trauma registry-Need of the hour

Kanica Kaushal

doi:10.4103/0970-0218.149275



LETTER TO EDITOR

Year : 2015 \| Volume : 40 \| Issue : 1 \| Page : 66

Trauma registry-Need of the hour

Kanica Kaushal
Department of Community Medicine, Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India

Date of Web Publication

13-Jan-2015

Correspondence Address:
Kanica Kaushal
Department of Community Medicine, Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh
India

Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None

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DOI: 10.4103/0970-0218.149275

How to cite this article:
Kaushal K. Trauma registry-Need of the hour. Indian J Community Med 2015;40:66

How to cite this URL:
Kaushal K. Trauma registry-Need of the hour. Indian J Community Med [serial online] 2015 [cited 2021 Jan 26];40:66. Available from: https://www.ijcm.org.in/text.asp?2015/40/1/66/149275

Sir,

This is in reference to the article, "Pattern, Severity and Circumstances of Injuries Sustained in Road Traffic Accidents: A Tertiary Care Hospital-Based Study" published in the Indian Journal of Community Medicine 2014;39:30-4. ^[1]

Injury surveillance is the best way of monitoring changing trends, identifying new problems, selecting interventions, measuring the impact of interventions and is the foundation to formulate injury prevention programs in India. ^[2]

I have a few concerns in this study regarding the source of data collection.

We can get reliable results only if every road traffic accident victim was asked the same question in the same way for every detail regarding the pattern, severity and circumstances of trauma.

Trauma registries are a potential source of part of the data needed for comprehensive public health surveillance of injuries. Like other disease registries, those for trauma are used to collect, store and retrieve data describing the etiologic factors, demographic characteristics, diagnoses, treatments, and clinical outcomes of individuals who meet specified case criteria. ^[3]

Unless trauma case sheets have a minimum set of trauma care data elements and standardized trauma care data definitions through an inclusive and consensus based process including demographic information of the patient, injury information, hospital procedure information etc., it is very difficult to interpret the results with the fact in place that the case sheets are filled at different times at trauma emergency by different medical professionals. ^[4]

However, there is still a continuing challenge regarding the exact inclusion criteria to select patient for trauma registry, which needs to be catered for making the effective use of this data.

References

1.	Singh R, Singh HK, Gupta SC, Kumar Y. Pattern, severity and circumstances of injuries sustained in road traffic accidents: A tertiary care hospital-based study. Indian J Community Med 2014;39:30-4. [PUBMED]
2.	Injury surveillance or trauma registry: Need of hour and time to start. [Internet]. Available from: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S097305081 1800225 [Last accessed on 2014 Feb 11].
3.	Trauma Registries and Public Health Surveillance of Injuries. [Internet]. Available from: www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ice/ice95v1/c11.pdf [Last accessed on 2014 Feb 11].
4.	Trauma Registry guidelines-EMS India. [Internet]. Available from: www.emsindia.in/.../Article_15009-A-04-TrumaRegistryGuide.pdf [Last accessed on 2014 Feb 10].