The Minor Injury Scale.

OBJECTIVE

To develop an injury scoring system suitable for non-life-threatening injuries.

METHODS

A prospective cohort study was conducted using a representative sample of 1,396 injured adults to identify the outcomes of a range of injuries. Data were collected between March 12, 1992, and March 11, 1993, in the Australian Capital Territory, a geographically circumscribed urban community of 296,000 people served by two hospital EDs. Outcomes included "injury-related health status immediately following injury occurrence" and "accumulated health loss over the period of recovery." The injury-related health status of each subject at the time of the injury occurrence was measured using the Health Consequences of Injury Questionnaire (HCIQ), which records this outcome as a value on a unitary scale. Injuries were then stratified by injury type, as identified by the Abbreviated Injury Scale numerical identifiers. The median health index value for each type of injury was designated the injury severity score for that injury type. The "accumulated health loss over time until recovery" for each injury was calculated from repeated administrations of the HCIQ over a six-month follow-up period, and the median outcome value for each injury type was designated the injury morbidity score for that injury.

RESULTS

Injury severity scores for 46 types of minor injury and injury morbidity scores for 39 types of minor injury were tabulated to form the Minor Injury Scale.

CONCLUSION

This new injury scoring system provides a means of categorizing minor injury according to properties relevant to a public health approach to injury control. Expansion of the number of injury types scored requires further work, as does the testing of the results obtained to confirm the predictive power of the scales.