The application of the Kampala trauma Score for prehospital assessment of severity of injuries and prediction of outcome after severe trauma

Abstract

Severe trauma is the main cause of mortality and disability in modern society. Emergency medical doctors are usually the first to establish contact with the injured person, and the extent of definitive care largely depends on their correct assessment of the severity of the injury, using an adequate pre-hospital trauma score. Injury severity scores are used to numerically categorize the type and extent of the injury. They represent an important additional instrument, which is used to enable faster triage, the categorization of injury severity, adequate care, treatment, and transport of patients with multiple injuries to the appropriate hospital. They are also important in research. This paper aims to suggest, using several case reports, the possibility of pre-hospital use of the Kampala Trauma Score (KTS) as an easily applicable and very suitable system for monitoring the condition and predicting the outcome of seriously injured patients. The patients were primarily assessed at the pre-hospital level and assigned a certain injury severity score according to the KTS, which later proved to reflect their definitive outcome. It can be concluded that the KTS is an effective scoring system that can be used during initial triage of the seriously injured for categorization of the severity of the injury, prediction of mortality and necessity of hospitalization. The possibility of its potential application during emergency care of the seriously injured, both for differentiating the severity of injuries and for predicting the definitive outcome, is indicated. However, due to the limited number of patients, original research should be conducted on a larger sample.