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Motor Vehicle Crash (MVC) Case Definitions and How They Impact MVC Surveillance

Description

In 2012, an estimated 2.5 million people presented to the ED for a MVC injury in the U.S. National injury surveillance is commonly captured using E-codes. However, use of E-codes alone to capture MVC-related ED visits may result in a different picture of MVC injuries compared to using text searches of triage or chief compliant notes.

Objective

Identify and describe how the case definition used to identify MVC patients can impact results when conducting MVC surveillance using ED data. We compare MVC patients identified using external cause of injury codes (E-codes), text searches of triage notes and chief complaint, or both criteria together.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on