Short-term outcome following significant trauma: increasing age per se has only a relatively low impact.

Purpose: Ongoing demographic changes go hand in hand with an increasing number of elderly injured. Given the conflicting literature we wanted to know how much age per se, apart from other factors, actually explains the outcome for elderly trauma patients.

Methods: Retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data on all significantly injured (new injury severity score, NISS  ≥ 8) adult patients treated at a Swiss trauma center between 01.