A Critical Assessment of the Out-of-Hospital Trauma Triage Guidelines for Physiologic Abnormality

BACKGROUND: It remains unclear whether the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma (ACSCOT) "step 1" field physiologic criteria could be further restricted without substantially sacrificing sensitivity. We assessed whether more restrictive physiologic criteria would improve the specificity of this triage step without missing high-risk patients. METHODS: We analyzed an out-of-hospital, consecutive patient, prospective cohort of injured …