Injury Prevention and long-term Outcomes following Trauma—the IPOT project: a protocol for prospective nationwide registry-based studies in Norway

Abstract

IntroductionTraumatic injuries constitute a major cause of mortality and morbidity. Still, the public health burden of trauma in Norway has not been characterised using nationwide registry data. More knowledge is warranted on trauma risk factors and the long-term outcomes following trauma. The Injury Prevention and long-term Outcomes following Trauma project will establish a comprehensive research database. The Norwegian National Trauma Registry (NTR) will be merged with several data sources to pursue the following three main research topics: (1) the public health burden of trauma to society (eg, excess mortality and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs)), (2) trauma aetiology (eg, socioeconomic factors, comorbidity and drug use) and (3) trauma survivorship (eg, survival, drug use, use of welfare benefits, work ability, education and income).Methods and analysisThe NTR (n≈27 000 trauma patients, 2015–2018) will be coupled with the data from Statistics Norway, the Norwegian Patient Registry, the Cause of Death Registry, the Registry of Primary Health Care and the Norwegian Prescription Database. To quantify the public health burden, DALYs will be calculated from the NTR. To address trauma aetiology, we will conduct nested case–control studies with 10 trauma-free controls (drawn from the National Population Register) matched to each trauma case on birth year, sex and index date. Conditional logistic regression models will be used to estimate trauma risk according to relevant exposures. To address trauma survivorship, we will use cohort and matched cohort designs and time-to-event analyses to examine various post-trauma outcomes.Ethics and disseminationThe project is approved by the Regional Committee for Medical Research Ethics. The project’s data protection impact assessment is approved by the data protection officer. Results will be disseminated to patients, in peer-reviewed journals, at conferences and in the media.

A qualitative longitudinal study of traumatic orthopaedic injury survivors’ experiences with pain and the long-term recovery trajectory

“…To determine the severity of the injuries suffered by the participants, New Injury Severity Scores (NISSs), calculated by a certified trauma registrar, were retrieved from the Norwegian National Trauma Registry and described in detail in 2021. 38 The NISS is defined as the sum of the squares of the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) scores of a patients three most severe AIS injuries, regardless of body region in which they occur. 39 Patient and public involvement Two patients with previous orthopaedic polytraumatic injury with long-term experience as trauma patients were involved in the planning of study design, development and testing of the interview guide for the first interview 6-week postdischarge.…”

“…The COnsolidated criteria for REporting Qualitative research (COREQ) Checklist37 was used when planning and conducting the study, and pseudonyms were used for all the participants. To determine the severity of the injuries suffered by the participants, New Injury Severity Scores (NISSs), calculated by a certified trauma registrar, were retrieved from the Norwegian National Trauma Registry and described in detail in 2021 38. The NISS is defined as the sum of the squares of the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) scores of a patients three most severe AIS injuries, regardless of body region in which they occur 39…”

Risk of epilepsy after traumatic brain injury: a nationwide Norwegian matched cohort study

“…This study is part of the Injury Prevention and Outcomes following Trauma project, where a comprehensive research database has been established by coupling NTR-data to several independent, national registries using the Norwegian social security number ( 22 ). For each of the trauma cases in NTR, 10 controls have been drawn from the National Population Register to represent the Norwegian general population, according to risk-set sampling with replacement for a nested case–control (NCC) design.…”

“…The NorPD contains information on all dispensed prescription drugs from Norwegian pharmacies. The data flow and exclusions from the NTR cohort, sampling of controls and linkage of national registries and databases have been described by Stenehjem et al ( 22 ).…”