A Prehospital Glasgow Coma Scale Score ??? 14 Accurately Predicts the Need for Full Trauma Team Activation and Patient Hospitalization after Motor Vehicle Collisions

Abstract

The prehospital GCS score is a reliable physiologic parameter for predicting hospital admission after MVC. When obvious indicators (hypoxemia, multiple long bone fractures, focal neurologic deficits) for trauma team activation are lacking, the prehospital GCS score may be used to reduce overtriage and undertriage rates.

Outcome of severe traumatic brain injury at a critical care unit: a review of 87 patients

“…In the current study a GCS of 3-5 was associated with poor outcome. The GCS scoring system, fi rst described by Teadale and Janet (12) to quantify the state of consciousness, correlates well with neurological outcome (12)(13)(14). Quigley et al (15) retrospectively reviewed all the patients admitted to their trauma center over three years who had GCS of 3, 4 and 5, and found their overall survival to be low (12.5%).…”

Indications for Computed Tomography in Patients With Mild Head Injury

“…The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is well correlated with outcome and has good interobserver reliability, 18,21) so is widely used for the neurological assessment of head injury. However, more than 90% of patients with head injury that present to the emergency department have a GCS score of 15.…”

A Retrospective Study of Five Clinical Criteria and One Age Criterion for Selective Prehospital Spinal Immobilization

“…All values for the five clinical criteria included in the selective spinal immobilization protocol are chosen based on the current available literature [2,15,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. Only data gathered from the prehospital ambulance forms or the prehospital report in the medical files of the patients were used.…”

“…The goal of this study is to validate the sensitivity of a selective prehospital immobilization protocol in our region in the Netherlands that is similar to the protocol described by Domeier in his studies, including the five clinical criteria defined as reduced awareness [2,15,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30], evidence of intoxication [18,20,[23][24][25]29], neurological deficit [18-20, 23-25, 29], midline pain of the spinal region [18][19][20]25], distracting injury, and adding an age criterion that mandates immobilization of 65 years or older [19,29,[31][32][33].…”