Clinical decision rules for secondary trauma triage: predictors of emergency operative management.

Study Objective: Most injured patients taken by ambulance to hospital emergency departments do not require emergency surgery, yet most US trauma centers require a surgeon to be present on their arrival. If a clinical decision rule could be developed to accurately identify which injured patients require emergency operative intervention, then such "secondary triage" criteria could permit a trauma center to more efficiently use their surgeons' time.

Methods: We analyzed 7.