Data quality of Glasgow Coma Scale and Systolic Blood Pressure in scientific studies involving physician‐staffed emergency medical services: Systematic review

Abstract

BackgroundEmergency physicians on‐scene provide highly specialized care to severely sick or injured patients. High‐quality research relies on the quality of data, but no commonly accepted definition of EMS data quality exits. Glasgow Coma Score (GCS) and Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) are core physiological variables, but little is known about the quality of these data when reported in p‐EMS research. This systematic review aims to describe the quality of pre‐hospital reporting of GCS and SBP data in studies where emergency physicians are present on‐scene.MethodsA systematic literature search was performed using CINAHL, Cochrane, Embase, Medline, Norart, Scopus, SweMed + and Web of Science, in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. Reported data on accuracy of reporting, completeness and capture were extracted to describe the quality of documentation of GCS and SBP. External and internal validity assessment was performed by extracting a set of predefined variables.ResultsWe included 137 articles describing data collection for GCS, SBP or both. Most studies (81%) were conducted in Europe and 59% of studies reported trauma cases. Reporting of GCS and SBP data were not uniform and may be improved to enable comparisons. Of the predefined external and internal validity data items, 26%‐45% of data were possible to extract from the included papers.ConclusionsReporting of GCS and SBP is variable in scientific papers. We recommend standardized reporting to enable comparisons of p‐EMS.

Differences in time-critical interventions and radiological examinations between adult and older trauma patients: A national register-based study

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Tele-EMS physicians improve life-threatening conditions during prehospital emergency missions

“…In the records analyzed in this study, an overall high level of complete documentation was found, although there were several individual parameters that need more consistent documentation (49% availability for data on the respiration rate, temperature and blood glucose level). In past studies, the percent of cases with adequate RR documentation varied from 10–40%, and a recent systematic review on data quality in EMS reported that there were deficiencies in the completeness and accuracy of the reporting 35 – 37 . Therefore, the documentation of tele-EMS missions appears to be of relatively higher quality in terms of the completeness of the data.…”

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