Data sources for penetrating trauma.

Area of Science:

• Epidemiology
• Trauma research
• Public health surveillance

Background:

• Trauma research relies on accurate case identification.
• City data sources (CDSs) like police reports, ambulance logs, and medical examiner (ME) records are potential resources for trauma surveillance.
• Evaluating the completeness and accuracy of these CDSs is crucial for reliable epidemiologic studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the utility of three city data sources (police reports, ambulance reports, and medical examiner logs) for epidemiologic studies of penetrating chest and/or abdominal trauma.
• To determine the completeness of case reporting from individual and combined CDSs.
• To compare the performance of each CDS against hospital records as a standard.

Main Methods:

• Utilized police reports, ambulance reports, and ME logs from Baltimore city for 1979-1980 to identify cases of severe penetrating chest/abdomen trauma.
• Matched identified cases with hospital admission records from six study hospitals.
• Calculated the percentage of cases identified by each source and combinations of sources.
• Determined the completeness of case reporting for each source using hospital records as the gold standard.

Main Results:

• Individual sources identified varying percentages of cases: police (66.8%), ambulance (47.9%), ME (16.6%).
• Combined sources improved identification: police + ambulance (89.4%), police + ME (82.9%).
• Hospital records confirmed 89.2% of CDS-identified cases, but 34.7% of CDS cases lacked hospital verification. Completeness against hospital records: police (66.2%), ambulance (72.9%), ME (92.2%).

Conclusions:

• Existing city data sources (CDSs) for trauma surveillance should be used with caution due to potential inaccuracies and incompleteness.
• The combined use of multiple data sources significantly enhances the identification of trauma cases compared to relying on any single source.
• Future epidemiologic studies of trauma should leverage integrated data from various city sources for more comprehensive and reliable findings.