LINKAGE OF HOSPITAL TRAUMA DATA AND ROAD ACCIDENT DATA

The British national road accident reporting system (STATS19) has three categories to record injury severity - killed, serious and slight. The value to researchers of enhancing STATS19 casualty records with clinical information has long been recognised. A new source of clinical data has been made available to TRL by the UK Trauma Audit and Research Network. These data have been combined with STATS19 data for England from 1994-96. The additional information includes details about the journey to hospital, length of stay in hospital and the injuries sustained by body region. This report describes the process used to link the two data sets. It provides an overview of the new data, and reports several detailed statistical analyses. These include a regional comparison of the time taken for casualties to reach hospital and an investigation of the consequences of a longer journey for a casualty's prospects of survival. (A)