TY - JOUR PY - 1990// TI - Injury surveillance using hospital discharge abstracts coded by external cause of injury (E code) JO - Journal of trauma A1 - Gallagher, Susan Scavo A1 - Berenholz, G. A1 - Guyer, B. SP - 470 EP - 473 VL - 30 IS - 4 N2 - Current knowledge of the patterns of injury in the United States derive principally from mortality statistics that constitute less than 0.1% of all injuries reaching medical attention. There presently exists no national system for the surveillance of nonfatal injuries. To illustrate the usefulness and feasibility of conducting injury surveillance using E-coded hospital discharge data, we examined the surveillance data from the Massachusetts Statewide Childhood Injury Prevention Program. By using E-coded hospital discharge data, we increased the number of cases available for analysis by 40-fold over deaths, and we were able to describe the epidemiologic characteristics of the important causes of nonfatal childhood injuries. We therefore propose the development of a national injury surveillance system based on the Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Set coded by both the nature of the injury (N Code) and external cause (E Code). LA - SN - 0022-5282 UR - http://dx.doi.org/ ID - ref1 ER -