As noted in the Method, a minimum set of data items was specified a-priori as key indicators in the assessment of the identified studies (Table ​(Table3).3). Further to the discussion of each study above, Table ​Table66 shows the number of studies that reported key patient demographic, injury mechanism

and location, and severity indices. While all studies reported the mechanism of injury, high-level and mixed category descriptors were used with none using ICD-10 external cause coding (Table ​(Table7).7). Categories such as ‘transport’, ‘traffic’, ‘unintentional Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical injury’ provide only a TAE684 limited understanding of the mechanism of injury and certainly the Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical use of precise mechanism descriptions – such as pedestrian, motorcyclist, car occupant, as recommended by a range of guidelines are required to permit comparisons between studies to be made and for building a comprehensive national injury profile. Similarly, while most studies

reported the age distribution of their sample there was a lack of uniformity in the age categories used; this was described fully in the text above. There is a need for researchers to adopt the Utstein type age categories [13,14] in order to fully understand injury risk across Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the age spectrum in China. Two studies failed to report the patient sex, both of these being retrospective studies; these same studies reported patient age in a limited manner. Mortality was the most commonly reported severity index (69%, 9 of 13 studies), however only one study reported Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical pre-hospital mortality. There was little use of standard severity indices. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Two studies provided an estimate of superficial, open wounds and fractures but did not differentiate body region, despite the terms ‘superficial’, ‘open’ and ‘fractures’ being used

in the ICD. Three studies utilised the AIS-ISS system [33-35] although did so in a limited manner. Only one study reported financial cost data with the same study reporting patient length of stay, also these being two inter-related outcome variables. None of the studies in the Review reported GCS [20], RTS [21], TRISS [22], ICD codes [19] or admission to ICU. Discussion Set amid growing calls for the establishment of injury surveillance systems in China, we conducted a review of injury surveillance research conducted the emergency departments published locally. The systematic search identified 268 research papers with an injury and medical care focus published in the period 1997 to 2007 published in Chinese; of these 13 were broad-based injury surveillance studies set in hospital emergency departments.