Are statewide trauma registries comparable? Reaching for a national trauma dataset.

Background: Statewide trauma registries have proliferated in the last decade, suggesting that information could be aggregated to provide an accurate depiction of serious injury in the United States.

Objectives: To determine whether variability exists in the composition and content of statewide trauma registries, specifically addressing case-acquisition, case-definition (inclusion criteria), and registry-coding conventions.

Methods: A cross-sectional, two-part survey was administered to managers of all statewide trauma registries.