Early identification of bleeding in trauma patients: external validation of traumatic bleeding scores in the Swiss Trauma Registry

Abstract

Abstract Background Early identification of bleeding at the scene of an injury is important for triage and timely treatment of injured patients and transport to an appropriate facility. The aim of the study is to compare the performance of different bleeding scores. Methods We examined data from the Swiss Trauma Registry for the years 2015–2019. The Swiss Trauma Registry includes patients with major trauma (injury severity score (ISS) ≥ 16 and/or abbreviated injury scale (AIS) head ≥ 3) admitted to any level-one trauma centre in Switzerland. We evaluated ABC, TASH and Shock index (SI) scores, used to predict massive transfusion (MT) and the BATT score and used to predict death from bleeding. We evaluated the scores when used prehospital and in-hospital in terms of discrimination (C-Statistic) and calibration (calibration slope). The outcomes were early death within 24 h and the receipt of massive transfusion (≥ 10 Red Blood cells (RBC) units in the first 24 h or ≥ 3 RBC units in the first hour). Results We examined data from 13,222 major trauma patients. There were 1,533 (12%) deaths from any cause, 530 (4%) early deaths within 24 h, and 523 (4%) patients who received a MT (≥ 3 RBC within the first hour). In the prehospital setting, the BATT score had the highest discrimination for early death (C-statistic: 0.86, 95% CI 0.84–0.87) compared to the ABC score (0.63, 95% CI 0.60–0.65) and SI (0.53, 95% CI 0.50–0.56), P < 0.001. At hospital admission, the TASH score had the highest discrimination for MT (0.80, 95% CI 0.78–0.82). The positive likelihood ratio for early death were superior to 5 for BATT, ABC and TASH. The negative likelihood ratio for early death was below 0.1 only for the BATT score. Conclusions The BATT score accurately estimates the risk of early death with excellent performance, low undertriage, and can be used for prehospital treatment decision-making. Scores predicting MT presented a high undertriage rate. The outcome MT seems not appropriate to stratify the risk of life-threatening bleeding. Trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT04561050. Registered 15 September 2020.