The purpose of this syndromic surveillance query is to monitor trends in unintentional motor vehicle traffic-related crash injury among passenger vehicle occupants who present to emergency departments. Passenger vehicles are defined as cars/SUVs, pick-up trucks, and vans for the purposes of this syndrome. Emergency department visits due to crashes among drivers and riders of other types of vehicles like motorcycles, heavy transport vehicles, buses, and tractor trailers are excluded from this query. Occupants are defined as either motor vehicle drivers or passengers but not, for example, pedestrians or cyclists who are involved in collisions with motor vehicles. The query aims to identify visits caused by unintentional crashes and aims to exclude visits caused by crashes that are violence- or suicide-related. Similarly, the query aims to identify visits due to crashes that occur on public roads (called “traffic-related crashes”) and aims to exclude visits due to crashes that occur in driveways, parking lots, and private roads. Finally, the query limits to initial encounter emergency department visits only and not subsequent or sequela visits. The syndrome is meant to complement the “All Traffic Related” syndrome that was created by the Washington State Department of Health.
Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) and Division of Injury Prevention’s Transportation Safety Team collaborated with state and local health departments to develop this query. International Classification of Diseases, 9 th and 10th Revisions, Clinical Modification codes (ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM), Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) codes, and chief complaint keywords were included for emergency department visits related to motor vehicle traffic-related crash injuries among passenger vehicle occupants.
Queries for earlier time periods when ICD-9-CM codes were predominantly used (i.e., 2015 and earlier) will not be directly comparable to later years because ICD-9-CM codes do not distinguish between initial emergency department visit encounters and subsequent or sequela visits. About 1% of visits identified with this query for years 2015 and earlier will represent subsequent or sequela visits based on comparison to 2016-2022 data. Note that an initial encounter might be for a crash that occurred minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months earlier. The query aims to exclude visits where the crash occurred “last month” or “last year” but otherwise, does not address the timing between the crash and the initial encounter.
The query is now in the NSSP BioSense Platform Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE) as a Chief Complaint and Discharge Diagnosis (CC and DD) Category called “CDC Motor Vehicle Crash Occupant Injury v1”. The definition may be revised in the future as trends emerge and feedback is received.