| The coverage (i.e. case ascertainment) of data collection has improved from 73% to 86%, following the removal of ineligible cases. Twenty-one hospitals achieved the data collection target of 80%. The number of individual patient submissions for 2017 is 5,061 compared to 4,426 in 2016. The number of patients sustaining major trauma in 2017, as defined by an Injury Severity Score (ISS) higher than 15, was 1,628.
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| There has been a further increase in the mean and median age of major trauma patients to 58 and 61 years, respectively. The age profile of major trauma patients has important implications for healthcare planning.
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| Low falls are the most common mechanism of injury for patients aged 45 years and older and for children. Among patients aged 15–44 years, the most common mechanism of injury is road trauma.
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| Home is the location of injury in half of all major trauma cases.
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| Major trauma patients in the younger age groups are more likely to be pre-alerted, received by a trauma team, seen by a consultant in the emergency department (ED) and transferred to another hospital for further specialist care.
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| This is the first MTA report that compares hospitals across a number of measures, including data quality, access to care, processes and outcome measures, and that identifies variation across hospitals, in line with other NOCA reports.
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| When compared to international standards, there are deficits in clinical care identified, including low levels of consultant-led trauma teams receiving severely injured patients, poor adherence with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) head injury guidelines for time to computed tomography (CT) imaging and low levels of direct admission to neurosurgical care in moderate and severe traumatic brain injury cases.
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| Many patients in the Irish setting continue to be brought to hospitals that do not have the services on site to manage their injuries; we provide a subgroup analysis of transfers to highlight the need for the proposed Trauma System for Ireland.
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| TraumaDoc, which is a decision support and documentation tool, has been endorsed by the MTA Governance Committee to support a standardised approach to documentation and trauma data capture across hospitals in Ireland.
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| The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has recently published guidance on data quality required in audit, and the MTA has successfully completed a data quality statement using the HIQA standards.
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