Defining acute aortic syndrome after trauma: Are Abbreviated Injury Scale codes a useful surrogate descriptor?

Background: The severity and location of injuries resulting from vehicular collisions are normally recorded in Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) code; we propose a system to link AIS code to a description of acute aortic syndrome (AAS), thus allowing the hypothesis that aortic injury is progressive with collision kinematics to be tested.

Methods: Standard AIS codes were matched with a clinical description of AAS. A total of 199 collisions that resulted in aortic injury were extracted from a national automotive collision database and the outcomes mapped onto AAS descriptions.