Trauma registry implementation and operation in low and middle income countries: A scoping review

ABSTRACT

Injury is a major public health crisis contributing to more than 4.48 million deaths annually. Trauma registries have proven highly effective in reducing injury morbidity and mortality rates in high income countries. They are a critical source of information for injury prevention, benchmarking care, quality improvement, and resource allocation. Historically, low and middle income countries (LMICs) have largely been excluded from trauma registry development due to limited resources. Recently, this has begun to change with low-resource hospitals adopting innovative strategies to implement trauma registries. Nonetheless, dissemination of these strategies remains fragmented. Hospitals looking to develop their own trauma registries have no current, comprehensive resource that summarises the implementation decisions of other registries in similar contexts. This scoping review aims to identify where trauma registries are located in LMICs, bringing up to date previous estimates, and to identify the most common approaches to registry implementation and operation in these settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Trauma registry
• low and middle income country
• injury surveillance

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Hazel Plante (Liaison Librarian, SFU), and Keshav Mukunda (Research Data Librarian at SFU), for their helpful guidance in developing the search strategy for this review. This work received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Authors’ contributions

Study concept and design: LR, NS, MH; screening of abstracts: LR, NS, MH; screening of full papers: LR; analysis and interpretation of data: LR; drafting of the manuscript: LR; critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content and for final approval: LR, NS, MH. All authors have read and approved the final version.