A Case Report on a Patient Whose Road Traffic Injury Severity Was Determined by the MAIS (Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale) Score

There are numerous definitions and classifications of severe trauma. Due to the observed heterogeneity in the existing definitions and the lack of a uniform definition of serious bodily injury, in January 2013 the High Level Group on Road Safety EU (HLGRS) published the definition of serious bodily injury in road traffic as a non-fatal injury with Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale (MAIS) between 3 and 6, including the limit values. However, determining the MAIS score is not easy even for doctors with many years of experience. A female patient, injured as a pedestrian in a traffic accident, was examined prehospitally, and was transported to the hospital in the optimal golden hour from the time of the injury. The patient was intubated and mechanically ventilated in the Critical Care Resuscitation Unit. After the entire diagnostic procedure, diagnoses were made according to the ICD classification of diseases. During further examination, each code of the diagnosis of the disease was assigned an AIS code and the highest AIS score - AIS 5 was determined, which indicated that the patient was critically injured. Our patient's MAIS score was 5. After 39 days she was discharged from hospital. The neurological findings at discharge corresponded to left hemiparesis – ASIA D impairment grade. In conclusion, a novelty in the assessment of severe bodily injury is the introduction of the AIS/MAIS score. However, to avoid a subjective assessment of these scores, AIS dictionaries should be obtained for physicians, or a software solution should be developed to convert ICD-10 diagnoses into the AIS / MAIS injury scale.