title: Preventable death classification: interrater reliability and comparison with ISS-based survival probability estimates.
abstract: The purpose of the study was to compare the injury-related threat to survival estimated by the Injury Severity Score (ISS) and a committee of experts. The charts of 116 (73 fatalities and 43 survivors) patients with severe injuries were reviewed. A committee of nine clinicians classified each case as survivable, potentially survivable, and nonsurvivable based on anatomical descriptors, mechanism of injury, and patient's age. Majority was used to determine the final committee classification. Based on the ISS values, cases were classified as survivable (9-24), potentially survivable (25-49), and nonsurvivable (> 49). The results showed poor interrater reliability among the nine clinicians with an overall intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.43. The ISS-based classification had high agreement with the final committee classification (overall weighted kappa = 0.71). Lower agreement was observed for falls and with increasing number of injuries. This study has demonstrated no additional benefit for using a committee to classify injury severity on the basis of anatomical damage over applying ISS-based survival probabilities. The continued use of the ISS is supported.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Montreal General Hospital, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Sampalis
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Boukas
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nikolis
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lavoie
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D011336:Probability; D011379:Prognosis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D016019:Survival Analysis; D015599:Trauma Severity Indices; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000145:classification / Q000401:mortality* / Q000517:prevention & control