Background.

The global population is on the rise and with such motor vehicle collisions, increasing the morbidity and mortality of individuals implicated in traffic accidents. The combination of clinical and paraclinical factors, as done by the different trauma scales, have an impact upon morbidity and mortality by allowing timely actions.

Methods.

Cross-sectional study that included patients with collision injuries in traffic accidents, treated at an emergency department from 2017 to 2018 at Hospital Universitario San José in Popayán, Colombia, a high-complexity hospital. The study defined the universe, collected sociodemographic and biological variables, and applied three trauma scales: Revised Trauma Score, Injury Severity Score, and New Injury Severity Score. Subsequently, its performance in predicting mortality was evaluated.

Results.

Six-hundred-fifty patients with collision injuries were treated in the emergency department with lesions due to collisions in traffic accidents; 16 deaths were reported. We found that the sensitivity varies between 75% for the Revised Trauma Score to 93.8% for the Injury Severity Score and the New Injury Severity Score. Likewise, an adequate specificity varying from 89,1% for the Injury Severity Score to 96,8% for the Revised Trauma Score. The best positive likelihood ratio was for the Revised Trauma Score. The negative likelihood ratios for the Injury Severity Score and the New Injury Severity Score were adequate.

Conclusion.

The results show an adequate performance of the trauma scales evaluated to predict mortality. The scale that presented the best performance was Injury Severity Score due to its sensitivity, specificity and positive likelihood ratio.

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