Pediatric Trauma Undertriage: Working Toward a Better Threshold Based on Trauma Center Resource Utilization
Highlights
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- Current trauma injury severity systems are mortality-based and are derived from adult data; therefore, they have exhibited greater accuracy for adult trauma patients compared to pediatric trauma patients.
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- International Classification of Disease Critical Care Severity Score (ICASS), a resource-based metric, has greater sensitivity to predict need for pediatric trauma resources compared to the Injury Severity Score (ISS) or the International Classification of Disease (ICD) Injury Severity Score (ICISS) in injured children.
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- Pediatric trauma systems should consider utilizing ICASS to assist in defining undertriage in pediatric trauma.
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- Future studies may consider comparing ICASS to other pediatric-specific trauma severity of injury metrics to better define injury severity and trauma center resource utilization in this population.
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
3. Results
Descriptive Results
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
Abbreviations
| ACS | American College of Surgeons |
| AUC | area under the curve |
| ICASS | International Classification of Disease Critical Care Severity Score |
| ICD | International Classification of Disease |
| ICISS | International Classification of Disease injury severity score |
| ISS | injury severity score |
| NFPTCR | need for pediatric trauma resources |
| NFTI | need for trauma intervention |
| PTC | pediatric trauma center |
| PTS | pediatric trauma score |
| ROC | receiver–operator characteristic |
| rSIG | reverse Shock Index (SI) times Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) |
| SOI | severity of injury |
| TQIP | Trauma Quality Improvement Program |
| TRISS | trauma injury severity score |
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| Criterion Name | Criterion Description | Timeframe from Arrival |
|---|---|---|
| Transfusion | Emergent transfusion of any blood product: packed red blood cells, plasma, platelets, and/or cryoprecipitate | 4 h |
| Urgent procedure | Procedural intervention: tube thoracostomy, pericardiocentesis, intracranial pressure monitoring, craniotomy, laparotomy, hemorrhage control, invasive angiography, repair/resection procedure for solid organ or hollow viscus injury | 72 h |
| Anesthesia ≤ 5 yrs | Any general anesthesia or mechanical ventilation in patients 5 years old or younger | Any |
| Intensive care unit | Admission from emergency dept to ICU, or any ICU stay ≥ 3 days | Any |
| Child abuse | Physical child abuse report or investigation | Any |
| Variable | NFPTCR+ (n = 15,985) | NFPTCR− (n = 81,788) | p-Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Age, years | 7 (3–13) | 8 (4–12) | <0.0001 |
| Sex, female | 10,145 (63) | 51,688 (63) | 0.54 |
| Injury mechanism | <0.0001 | ||
| Abuse/neglect | 1166 (7) | 119 (0.2) | |
| Gunshot/stab wound | 766 (5) | 1118 (1) | |
| Transport-related | 6671 (42) | 24,214 (30) | |
| Other blunt accidental/undetermined | 7382 (46) | 56,337 (69) | |
| Received as interfacility transfer | 6658 (42) | 31,247 (38) | <0.0001 |
| Arrived in cardiac arrest, or history of prehospital arrest | 632 (4) | 354 (0.4) | <0.0001 |
| Treating center pediatric verification level | <0.0001 | ||
| Level 1 | 5194 (32) | 31,124 (38) | |
| Level 2 | 2623 (16) | 10,991 (13) | |
| Non-verified/designated | 8168 (51) | 39,673 (49) | |
| Outcomes | |||
| Discharge home from emergency department | 216 (1) | 16,079 (20) | <0.0001 |
| Transfer to another hospital | 927 (6) | 9696 (12) | <0.0001 |
| Death | 850 (5) | 214 (0.3) | <0.0001 |
| Intensive care unit days among pts not transferred/deceased | 2 (0–3) | 0 (0–0) | <0.0001 |
| Hospital length of stay among pts not transferred/deceased, hours | 62.5 (28.3–139.1) | 18.0 (7.0–33.3) | <0.0001 |
| Metrics | |||
| Injury Severity Score (ISS) | 10 (5–17) | 4 (2–5) | <0.0001 |
| ICD (ICD) Injury Severity Score (ICISS) | 37 (19–59) | 18 (8–34) | <0.0001 |
| ICD Critical Care Severity Score (ICASS) | 52 (28–67) | 17 (5–29) | <0.0001 |
| ISS > 15 | 5447 (34) | 2413 (3) | |
| ICISS > 10 | 13,971 (87) | 56,843 (70) | |
| ICASS > 5 | 15,241 (95) | 62,567 (77) | |
| ICASS > 10 | 14,848 (93) | 52,835 (65) | |
| ICASS > 15 | 14,161 (89) | 44,355 (54) |
| Threshold Value | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sensitivity/Specificity | Sensitivity/ Specificity | Sensitivity/ Specificity | Sensitivity/ Specificity | AUC (95% CI) | p * | |
| ISS | 75.5/65.4 | 51.9/90.3 | 36.3/96.5 | 22.6/98.8 | 0.760 (0.755–0.765) | Ref |
| ICISS | 96.4/15.7 | 87.4/30.5 | 80.2/42.5 | 74.0/52.5 | 0.701 (0.696–0.706) | <0.0001 |
| ICASS | 95.3/23.6 | 92.9/35.3 | 88.7/45.6 | 85.4/54.9 | 0.812 (0.808–0.816) | <0.0001 |
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Crosier, C.J.; Mehmood, A.; Thatch, K.; Cisela, D.J.; Pracht, E.E.; Snyder, C.W. Pediatric Trauma Undertriage: Working Toward a Better Threshold Based on Trauma Center Resource Utilization. Children 2026, 13, 95. https://doi.org/10.3390/children13010095
Crosier CJ, Mehmood A, Thatch K, Cisela DJ, Pracht EE, Snyder CW. Pediatric Trauma Undertriage: Working Toward a Better Threshold Based on Trauma Center Resource Utilization. Children. 2026; 13(1):95. https://doi.org/10.3390/children13010095
Chicago/Turabian StyleCrosier, Caitlin J., Amber Mehmood, Keith Thatch, David J. Cisela, Etienne E. Pracht, and Christopher W. Snyder. 2026. "Pediatric Trauma Undertriage: Working Toward a Better Threshold Based on Trauma Center Resource Utilization" Children 13, no. 1: 95. https://doi.org/10.3390/children13010095
APA StyleCrosier, C. J., Mehmood, A., Thatch, K., Cisela, D. J., Pracht, E. E., & Snyder, C. W. (2026). Pediatric Trauma Undertriage: Working Toward a Better Threshold Based on Trauma Center Resource Utilization. Children, 13(1), 95. https://doi.org/10.3390/children13010095

