Injury Severity Score Calculator

Baker and colleagues created the Injury Severity Score in 1974. This medical score is based on the previously developed Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) and takes into account the three (out of six) most severe system injuries.

This adjustment allows doctors to add increasing weight to the most severe injuries. According to the study's results, injuries that alone may not be life-threatening can significantly influence mortality when combined with other trauma.

In this paragraph, you will find information on how to calculate Injury Severity Score.

Trauma in the ISS score can be related to six regions of the human body:

1. Head and neck (includes cervical spine);
2. Face: facial skeleton, nose, mouth, eyes, and ears;
3. Chest: thoracic spine and diaphragm;
4. Abdomen: abdominal organs and lumbar spine (includes pelvic contents);
5. Extremities or pelvic girdle: pelvic skeleton; and
6. External

Each part of the body is then scored for the worst injury as follows:

After scoring each body system, we perform the injury severity score calculation according to the following rules:

1. Choose the three most severely injured body systems.
2. Perform Injury Severity Score calculation by adding the three highest squared scores :

If any body system has a score of 6, ISS is automatically set to have the highest value - points.

Now that you know how to calculate Injury Severity Score, let's take a look at its interpretation:

• Injury Severity Score (ISS) takes values from to points;

• ISS score is the only anatomical scoring system that correlates linearly with mortality, morbidity, hospitalization time, and other severity measures;

• We associate ISS score with major trauma; and

• Bolorunduro et al. proposed the following classification of the injuries:

It would help you check you know how to calculate Injury Severity Score if we used a practical example of a patient who has been in a car crash. Doctors graded his injuries as follows:

First, we need to find the regions with the highest score. In this example, those are:

1. Abdomen - points
2. Chest - points
3. Face - point

Now we can calculate the patient's Injury Severity Score (ISS score trauma) as follows:

This patient's injuries can be categorized as moderate. The forces involved in the car crash were, for sure, not risible: you can learn how to calcualte them with our car crash calculator.