TheInjury Severity Score (ISS) is an established medical score to assess trauma severity.[1][2] It correlates with mortality, morbidity and hospitalization time after trauma. It is used to define the term major trauma. A major trauma (or polytrauma) is defined as the Injury Severity Score being greater than 15.[2] The AIS Committee of theAssociation for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM) designed and improves upon the scale.
TheAbbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) is an anatomically based consensus-derived global severity scoring system that classifies each injury in every body region according to its relative severity on a six-pointordinal scale:
There are nine AIS chapters corresponding to nine body regions:
The ISS is based (see below) upon theAbbreviated Injury Scale (AIS).To calculate an ISS for an injured person, the body is divided into six ISS body regions. These body regions are:
To calculate an ISS, take the highest AIS severity code in each of the three most severely injured ISS body regions, square each AIS code and add the three squared numbers for an ISS (ISS =A2 +B2 +C2 where A, B, C are the AIS scores of the three most injured ISSbody regions).The ISS scores ranges from 1 to 75 (i.e. AIS scores of 5 for each category). If any of the three scores is a 6, the score is automatically set at 75. Since a score of 6 ("unsurvivable") indicates the futility of further medical care in preserving life, this may mean a cessation of further care intriage for a patient with a score of 6 in any category.[3]
Online Calculator of the Injury Severity Score
