Injury severity scaling
A comparison of methods for measurement of injury severity

Geoffrey Henley
James E Harrison

June 2009
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
Canberra
AIHW cat. no. INJCAT 126

This report investigated the predictive properties of different methods of measurement of injury severity based upon the ICD-based Injury Severity Score (ICISS). The methods investigated included the multiplicative and the 'worst injury' variations of the ICISS. Both variants performed well. Age (which is commonly included in ICISS models) and comorbidity both improved model performance, while the best performing models included both of these covariates. Future possible enhancements are the inclusion of cases where death occurred outside of hospital, and better management of data for individuals who underwent more than one hospital separation for a single injury event. Both of these enhancements require further development of data linkage systems.

The report is available as a PDF document (~645 Kb).

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