MEDIA ALERT

from the American College of Surgeons http://www.facs.org

2003 Annual Report of National Trauma Data Bank™ provides

comprehensive profile of injury in America

CHICAGO--Traumatic injuries sustained in motor vehicle collisions remain the leading cause of accidental death in the United States, according to findings released today in the 2003 Annual Report of the National Trauma Data Bank™ (NTDB™) of the American College of Surgeons (ACS). The report was presented during the 2003 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons by national trauma experts who are members of the College's Committee on Trauma (COT). The NTDB Report not only provides an expanded understanding of who is admitted to US trauma centers, and why; it also cites payment source information and what hospital services are utilized to treat injured patients.

This is the third consecutive year that the COT has released an NTDB Report and it is an updated analysis of the largest aggregation of trauma registry data ever assembled. The NTDB now contains 731,824 records from 268 trauma centers in 36 states, territories, and the District of Columbia--an increase of 301, 367 since 2002. The 2003 Report provides a comprehensive profile of injury in America from 1997-2002, thus achieving a long-term goal of focusing the report's analysis on a sliding five-year time frame, and is based on 561,324 records.

Other key findings from the 2003 NTDB Report:

• The largest number of deaths is due to motor vehicle collisions, followed by gunshot wounds, and then falls.
• Motor vehicle collisions result in deaths in 5% of cases overall, whereas falls lead to deaths in 3.6% cases. However, gunshot wounds lead to death in 16.71% of all cases, and represent the highest percentage of any penetrating injury.
• Pedestrian injuries result in death in 8.56% of all cases, representing the highest percentage of all blunt injuries.
• Violent deaths in the US rise dramatically in victims 12-20 years of age, peak at 25-30 years, and then steadily decline.
• Beginning in early adulthood, women fare better than men with regard to mortality in all injury severity groupings.
• 89% percent of all severely injured patients receive a portion of their care in an emergency department: 56 % are subsequently admitted to medical-surgical wards, 20% percent are taken directly to the OR, and 21% are admitted to the intensive care unit.
• "Self-pay" is the largest single payment category for traumatic injury patients as cited in 18.63% cases in which payment source information was available. Nearly 84% of NTDB records include payment source information.

"The NTDB is committed to being the non-proprietary national repository for trauma center registry data. It is estimated that 35% of Level I and 26% of Level II trauma centers in the US contribute data to NTDB. Our ultimate goal is to receive data on every patient treated in every trauma center in the United States," according to John Fildes, MD, FACS, Chair, NTDB Ad Hoc Committee. "In 2003 we will introduce NTDB Online, based on analytical processing software. This tool will allow quick aggregate analysis and makes NTDB data accessible to researchers, clinicians, and others interested in data on the care of injured persons in the United States," Dr. Fildes said.

In addition, the 2003 NTDB report marks the beginning of a transition to the use of external cause-of-injury code groupings as first developed by the international injury prevention community and published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This framework was developed by the CDC and international partners to create a uniform reporting language for injury mortality and morbidity.

The entire 2003 NTDB report is available through the American College of Surgeons Web site:

http://www.facs.org/trauma/ntdbannualreport2003.pdf

The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and to improve the care of surgical patients. With more than 65,000 members, it is the largest organization of surgeons in the world. The ACS Committee on Trauma is a field force of literally thousands of ACS members in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. It publishes widely recognized guidelines on the resources required for optimal care of injured patients.

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Online October 19, 2003