Revised Trauma Score
The Revised Trauma Score (RTS) is a physiologic scoring system, designed for use in based on the initial vital signs of a patient.[1] A lower score indicates a higher severity of injury.[2]
| Revised Trauma Score | |
|---|---|
| Medical diagnostics | |
| Purpose | physiologic scoring system |
Use in triage
The Revised Trauma Score is made up of a three categories: Glasgow Coma Scale, systolic blood pressure, and respiratory rate. The score range is 0–12. In START triage, a patient with an RTS score of 12 is labeled delayed, 11 is urgent, and 3–10 is immediate. Those who have an RTS below 3 are declared dead and should not receive certain care because they are highly unlikely to survive without a significant amount of resources.
Scoring
The score is as follows:[3]
Glasgow Coma Scale
|
Systolic Blood Pressure
|
Respiratory Rate
|
These three scores (Glasgow Coma Scale, Systolic Blood Pressure, Respiratory Rate) are then used to take the weighted sum by RTS = 0.9368 GCS + 0.7326 SBP + 0.2908 RR. Values for the RTS are in the range 0 to 7.8408. The RTS is heavily weighted towards the Glasgow Coma Scale to compensate for major head injury without multisystem injury or major physiological changes. A threshold of RTS < 4 has been proposed to identify those patients who should be treated in a trauma centre, although this value may be somewhat low.
References
- Champion HR, Sacco WJ, Carnazzo AJ, Copes W, Fouty WJ (September 1981). "Trauma score". Crit. Care Med. 9 (9): 672–6. doi:10.1097/00003246-198109000-00015. PMID 7273818.
- Taber, Clarence Wilbur; Venes, Donald (2009). Taber's cyclopedic medical dictionary. F a Davis Co. p. 2366. ISBN 0-8036-1559-0.
- Champion HR, Sacco WJ, Copes WS, Gann DS, Gennarelli TA, Flanagan ME (May 1989). "A revision of the Trauma Score". The Journal of Trauma. 29 (5): 623–9. doi:10.1097/00005373-198905000-00017. PMID 2657085.