Predictive performance of prehospital trauma triage tools for resuscitative interventions within 24 hours in high-risk or life-threatening prehospital trauma patients

Abstract

Introduction: Several prehospital trauma triage tools have been recently developed, but no standardized tools currently exist to identify trauma patients at risk of requiring resuscitative interventions (RIs) within the first 24 h post-injury and to prioritize their transport to high-level trauma facilities. Methods: This prognostic study employed a retrospective cohort design to evaluate the predictive performance of the Triage Revised Score (T-RTS), Glasgow Coma Scale, Age, and Systolic Blood Pressure Score (GAP), Mechanism, Glasgow Coma Scale, Age, and Systolic Blood Pressure Score (MGAP), National Early Warning Score 2 (NEWS-2), Shock Index (SI), and Reverse Shock Index multiplied by Glasgow Coma Scale (rSIG) in predicting the need for RIs within 24 h. Data was retrieved from the electronic medical records of Ramathibodi Hospital, and the study included patients aged ≥ 15 years who were categorized as high-risk or life-threatening and subsequently transported to the emergency department. We used Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (AUROC) curve and calibration plots to assess the performance of prehospital trauma triage tools. Results: There were 440 traumatic injury patients enrolled in the study, with 44 (10%) receiving RIs. T-RTS, GAP, MGAP, and NEWS-2 demonstrate good discriminative and predictive performance for RIs within 24 h after an injury (AUROC of 0.969, 0.949, 0.971, and 0.929, respectively, with the O:E ratio of 1). With the predefined standard cut-off values, the GAP score of less than 19 results in the highest accuracy for ruling out patients who do not need RIs (Specificity = 94.4% and NPV = 94.1%, p-value < 0.001). Conclusions: Several commonly used prehospital trauma triage tools demonstrate good predictive abilities for identifying the need for RIs. Among these, the GAP score with a threshold value of 19 serves as an optimal tool for identifying patients who require transfer to high-level trauma facilities.