U.S. DEPARTMEN

Centers for Disea

National Center f
Preface 

On April 13th and 14th a working group meeting of the ICE on Injury Statistics was held 

in Paris, France at the Hotel Concorde Lafayette. What follows in these pages is a 

compilation of papers based on presentations and subsequent discussions during the 2-

day meeting. 

A key feature of the meeting was the introduction of a 5-year Strategic Plan for the ICE 

on Injury Statistics. As part of that plan, new statements on the vision, mission and goal 

of the ICE were accepted. 

Vision 

There will be injury statistics that are internationally comparable and useful for injury 

prevention and control. 

Mission 

The mission of the Injury ICE is to improve international comparability and quality of

injury data. The ultimate aim is to provide the data needed to better assess the causes and 

consequences of injury, differences in injury occurrence over time and place, and the 

most effective means of prevention and control. 

Goal

The goal of the Injury ICE is to provide a forum for international exchange and 

collaboration among injury researchers who develop and promote international standards 

in injury data collection and analysis. A secondary goal is to produce products of the 

highest quality to facilitate the comparability and improved quality of injury data. 

As Chair of the ICE, I was primarily responsible for setting the agenda of the Paris 

meeting and facilitated the sessions. In these Proceedings, each author is responsible for 

individual presentations, and as such, specific questions should be addressed to the 

author. 

These Proceedings will also be released on the ICE web pages. Detailed information 

about the ICE including work on specific projects, Proceedings of earlier meetings and 

lists of publications related to ICE work can be found at the website: 

www.cdc.gov/nchs/advice.htm

Lois A. Fingerhut 

Chair, ICE on Injury Statistics 

Special Assistant for Injury Epidemiology 

Office of Analysis, Epidemiology and Health Promotion 

National Center for Health Statistics 

iii
iv
Acknowledgements 

The planning of the meeting and the preparation of these Proceedings were made possible 

due to the dedicated assistance of my two colleagues at NCHS, Margaret Warner and 

Melissa Heinen. 

Thanks also to NCHS colleagues Sam Notzon, Special Assistant for Global Statistics, 

Elaine Wood, International Program Coordinator and Pat Drummond, Conference 

Assistant, for logistical support. 

Carla Battle from Courtesy Travel Associates continues to be our successful travel 

planner and we thank her! In addition, at this meeting in Paris we were fortunate to 

secure the services of a destination management company led by Maryse Freher at La 

Fayette Travel. 

I also want to thank the NIH, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 

for their continued support and sponsorship of the International Collaborative Effort on

Injury Statistics. 

v
Participant List 

International Collaborative Effort on Injury Statistics 

Hotel Concorde La Fayette 

Paris, France 

April 13-14, 2003 

Limor Aharonson-Daniel, Ph.D., B.Sc. Barbara M. Altman, Ph.D.

Israeli National Center for Trauma Special Assistant for Disability

and Emergency Medicine Research Office of Analysis, Epidemiology,

Gertner Institute and Health Promotion

Tel Hashomer, Israel National Center for Health Statistics

Tele: 972-3-5354252 ext. 6 3311 Toledo Road, Room 6111

Fax: 972-3-5353393 Hyattsville, MD 20782-2003

limorad@gertner.health.gov.il Tele: 301-458-4654

Fax: 301-458-4038

baltman@cdc.gov

Malka Avitzour, M.P.H. Anneke Bloemhoff, M.S.

School of Public Health Consumer Safety Institute

Hadassah Medical Organization and P.O. Box 75169

Hebrew University 1070 AD Amsterdam, The Netherlands

IL-91120 Tele: 31-20-511-4518

Jerusalem, Israel Fax: 31-20-669-2831

Tele: 972-2-6778105 a.bloemhoff@consafe.nl

Fax: 972-2-6439730

amalka@hadassah.org.il

Ruth Brenner, M.D., M.P.H. Alberto Concha-Eastman, MD, MSc

National Institute on Child Health Regional Advisor on Violence and 

and Human Development, NIH Injuries Prevention

9000 Rockville Pike, MSC 7510 PAHO/WHO

Building 6100, Room 7B03 525 23rd Street, NW, Room 720

Bethesda, MD 20892-7510 Washington, DC 20037

Tele: 301-496-5581 Tele: 202-974-3890

Fax: 301-402-2084 Fax: 202-974-3331

brennerr@exchange.nih.gov conchaal@paho.org

Colin Cryer, Ph.D. Anne-Marie Feyer, Ph.D.

Senior Research Fellow, Centre for PO Box Q1150

Health Services Studies Queen Victoria Post Office

University of Kent Sydney, NSW 1230, Australia

N211 George Allen Wing, Cornwallis Tele: 61-2-9310-3648

Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NZ, England Fax:

Tele: -1227-827963 afeyer@gandalf.otago.ac.nz

Fax: -1227-827868

p.c.cryer@kent.ac.uk

Lois A. Fingerhut, M.A. Robert J. Flanagan, Ph.D.

Special Assistant for Injury Consultant Biochemist

Office of Analysis, Epidemiology, Medical Toxicology Unit

and Health Promotion Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital Trust

National Center for Health Statistics Avonley Road

3311 Toledo Road, Room 6316 London SE14 5ER, England

Hyattsville, MD 20782-2003 Tele: 44(0) 207-771-5365

Tele: 301-458-4213 Fax: 44(0) 207-771-5363

Fax: 301-458-4038 robert.flanagan@gstt.nhs.uk

lfingerhut@cdc.gov

vii
Birthe Frimodt-Moller, M.D. Sue S. Gallagher, M.P.H.

Researcher Senior Scientist

Centre for Injury Research Children's Safety Network

National Institute of Public Health Education Development Center, Inc.

25 Svanemollevej 55 Chapel Street

DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Newton, MA 02458

Tele: 45-3920-7777 ext. 310 Tele: 617-618-2206

Fax: 45-3927-3095 Fax: 617-969-9186

bfm@niph.dk sgallagher@edc.org

Clare Griffiths James Harrison, M.B.B.S., M.P.H.

Senior Research Officer Director and Associate Professor, 

Office for National Statistics London AIHW National Injury Surveillance 

1 Drummond Gate Research Centre for Injury Studies

London SW1V 2QQ, England Flinders University

Tele: 020 7533 5242 Mark Oliphant Building, Laffer Drive

Fax: 020 7533 5103 Bedford Park 5042, Australia

clare.griffiths@ons.gsi.gov.uk Tele: 9011-61-8-8374-0970

Fax: 9011-61-8-8374-0702

james.harrison@flinders.edu.au

Melissa Heinen, M.P.H. Yvette Holder, M.P.H.

Statistician 39 Erthig Road Belmont

Office of Analysis, Epidemiology, Port of Spain

and Health Promotion Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies

National Center for Health Statistics Tele: 1-868-624-1441

3311 Toledo Road-Room 6308 Fax:

Hyattsville, MD 20782-2003 yvetteholder@aol.com

Tele: 301-458-4179

Fax: 301-458-4038

mheinen@cdc.gov

Lars-Gunnar Horte Anne Mette Tranberg Johansen, M.Sc.

Epidemiologist Statistician

Center for Safety Promotion National Institute of Public Health

Norrbacka, 1st Floor 25 Svanemollevej

SE-171 76 Stockholm, Sweden DK-2100 Coopenhagen, Denmark

Tele: +46 8 517 779 32 Tele: 45-3920-7777

Fax: +46 8 517 779 30 Fax: 45-3927-3095

lars-gunnar.horte@smd.sll.se amt@si-folkesundhed.dk

John D. Langley, Ph.D. Andre L'Hours

Director, Injury Prevention Research Technical Officer, Classification,

Department of Preventive and Social Assessment, Surveys, and Terminology

University of Otago Medical School World Health Organization

P.O. Box 913 20 Avenue Appia

Dunedin, New Zealand 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

Tele: 9011-64-3-4798511 Tele: 41-22-791-2843

Fax: 9011-64-3-4798337 Fax: 41-22-791-4328

john.langley@ipru.otago.ac.nz lhoursa@who.int

viii
Johan Lund, M.Sc. Susan G. Mackenize, Ph.D

Norwegian Safety Forum Senior Epidemiologist, Injury and 

P.O. Box 2473, Solli Child Maltreatment Section

N-0202 Oslo, Norway Health Surveillance and Epidemiology Division

Tele: 47-23-28-4200 CHHD/PPHB-Health Canada

Fax: 47-23-48-2211 Building #7, A.L. 0701D

johan.lund@fnh.mo Tunney's Pasture

Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0L2, Canada

Tele: 613-957-4703

Fax: 613-941-9927

susan_mackenzie@hc-sc.gc.ca

Ellen J. MacKenzie, Ph.D. Kara McGee, MSPH

Professor, Health Policy and Evaluation Technical Officer

Management and Director, Center for Unintentional Injury

Injury Research and Policy Prevention-Department of Injuries 

The Johns Hopkins School of Public World Health Organization

624 North Broadway, Room 554 20 Avenue appia

Baltimore, MD 21205 CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland

Tele: 410-614-4025 Tele: 41 22 791 1325

Fax: 410-614-2797 Fax: 41 22 791 4332

emackenz@jhsph.edu mcgeek@who.int

Ted R. Miller, Ph.D. Saakje Mulder, Ph.D., MSc

Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation Research Director

11710 Beltsville Drive, Suite 300 Consumer Safety Institute

Calverton, MD 20705 P.O. Box 75169

Tele: 301-755-2727 1070 AD Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Fax: 301-755-2799 Tele: 31-20-511-45-57

miller@pire.org Fax: 31-20-669-2831

s.mulder@consafe.nl

Eleni Petridou, MD, MPH Cleone Rooney, M.D.

Associate Professor of Epidemiology Medical Epidemiologist

Department of Hygiene and SESAG/D&H

Athens University Medical School Office of National Statistics

75 Mikras Asias Street, PO Box 11527 1 Drummond Gate, Room B7/04

Athens, Greece London SW1V 2QQ, England

Tele: +30 210 7462187 Tele: 9011-44-20 7533-5254

Fax: +30 210 7773840 Fax: 9011-44-20 7533-5103

epetrid@med.uoa.gr cleo.rooney@ons.gov.uk

Mathilde Sector, P.T., M.P.H. Maria Segui-Gomez, M.D., Sc.D.

Research Associate Adjunct Assistant Professor

European Child Safety Alliance The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene 

Institut Sicher Leben and Public Health

Vienna, Austria 624 North Broadway Street, Room 543

Tele: 43-1-715-6644321 Baltimore, MD 21205-1996

Fax: 43-1-715-664430 Tele: 410-614-9851

mathilde.sector@sicherleben.at Fax: 410-614-2797

mseguigo@jhsph.edu

ix
Gordon S. Smith, M.D., M.P.H. Nancy Stout, Ed.D.

Epidemiologist Director, Injury Surveillance

Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety Division of Safety Research

71 Frankland Road National Institute for Occupational 

Hopkinton, MA 01748 Safety and Health

Tele: 508 497-0250 1095 Chestnut Ridge Road

Fax: 508-435-8136 Morgantown, WV 26505-2888

gordon.smith@libertymutual.com Tele: 304-285-5894

Fax: 304-285-6047

nstout@cdc.gov

Bertrand Thelot, M.D. Emilio Castejon Vilella

Medical Epidemiologist, Injury Titulado Superior

Departement Maladies Chroniques et Instituto Nacional De Seguridad E 

Traumatismes Higiene En El Trabajo

Institut de Veille Sanitaire C/Dulcet, 2-10

12 rue du Val d'Osne 08034 Barcelona, Spain

94415 Saint-Maurice cedex, France Tele: 34-932-800-101

Tele: 33-0-141796875 Fax: 34-932-803-642

Fax: 33-0-141796811 emilioc@mtas.es

b.thelot@invs.sante.fr

Margaret Warner, Ph.D. Kathryn Wilkins, M.Sc.

Staff Fellow Senior Analyst, Health/Vital 

Office of Analysis, Epidemiology, Statistics Studies Section

and Health Promotion Health Statistics Division

National Center for Health Statistics Statistics Canada

3311 Toledo Road, Room 6325 Tunney's Pasture, RH Coats Building,

Hyattsville, MD 20782-2003 Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0T6, Canada

Tele: 301-458-4556 Tele: 613-951-1769

Fax: 301-458-4038 Fax: 613-951-0792

mwarner@cdc.gov kathryn.wilkins@statcan.ca

Pnina Zadka, M.S., M.P.H.

Senior Director

Economic Infrastructure Department

State of Israel Central Bureau of Statistics

P.O. Box 34525

Jerusalem 91342, Israel

Tele: 972-2-659-2101

Fax: 972-2-659-2103

pnina@cbs.gov.il

x
Agenda

International Collaborative Effort on Injury Statistics 

April 13-14, 2003 

HOTEL CONCORDE LA FAYETTE 

PARIS - CHAMPS-ELYSEES 

3, place du Général Koenig - 75017 Paris - France 

Telephone: (33) 01.40.68.50.68

Sunday, April 13 Room

8:00 a.m. Registration Van Gogh/Pissaro

8:30 a.m. Opening Remarks Van Gogh/Pissaro

Lois Fingerhut, Chair, ICE 

9:00 a.m. Update from European Commission – Mathilde Sector Van Gogh/Pissaro 

9:30 a.m. Discussion of Definition of Injury Van Gogh/Pissaro

Facilitated by Lois Fingerhut 

10:00 a.m. ICECI Update- Saakje Mulder Van Gogh/Pissaro 

10:30 a.m. Break 

10:45 a.m. Workgroups – Progress report presentation Van Gogh/Pissaro 

10 :45 Injury Indicators – Colin Cryer 

11:05 Selecting a main injury from multiple cause of death– Margaret Warner 

11:25 Household Surveys - Melissa Heinen/Kara McGee 

11:45 Occupational Injury – Nancy Stout/Anne-Marie Feyer 

12:05 Diagnosis Matrix and multiple injury- Limor Aharonson-Daniel 

 

12:30 p.m. Lunch break

1:45 p.m. Future goals - Update from strategic planning committee Van Gogh/Pissaro 

Sue Gallagher, Susan Mackenzie, Birthe Frimodt-Moller, 

Yvette Holder, James Harrison, and Ruth Brenner 

2:15 p.m. Disability Statistics and the Injury ICE – Barbara Altman Van Gogh/Pissaro 

2:45 p.m. Break 

3:00 p.m. Workgroups - Determine focus and workgroup members 

Injuries Indicators Van Gogh/Pissaro 

Selecting a main injury from multiple cause of death Renoir/Matisse 

 Disability Utrillo/Manet 

 Other Van Gogh/Pissaro 

4:00 p.m. Workgroups – Determine focus and workgroup members 

xi
 Household Surveys Van Gogh/Pissaro 

 Occupational Injury Renoir/Matisse

Diagnosis Matrix and multiple injury Utrillo/Manet 

 Other Van Gogh/Pissaro 

5:00p.m. Plans for day 2 Van Gogh/Pissaro

5:15 p.m. Adjourn Van Gogh/Pissaro

Monday, April 14

8:00 a.m. Registration Van Gogh/Pissaro

8:30 a.m. ICE participant updates Van Gogh/Pissaro

ICD-9 to ICD-10 Comparability in E&W – Cleo Rooney 

EU IPP: Disability & Indicators - Saakje Mulder

Nordic Injury Registration - Johan Lund 

Terrorism – Israel’s new classification - Pnina Zadka 

Poison ICE – Bob Flanagan 

 

9:30 a.m. Workgroups - Plan development 

 Injury Indicators Van Gogh/Pissaro 

MCOD/Selecting a main injury Van Gogh/Pissaro 

 Household Surveys Van Gogh/Pissaro 

 Occupational Injury Van Gogh/Pissaro 

Diagnosis Matrix and multiple injury Renoir/Matisse 

 Disability Untrillo/Manet 

10:45 a.m. Break 

11:00 a.m. Discussion of strategic plan Van Gogh/Pissaro

12:00 p.m. Lunch 

1:00 p.m. Workgroups continue to meet from morning in same room

2:15 p.m. Workgroups – Presentation of anticipated products/future work Van Gogh/Pissaro 

 2:15 Injury Indicators 

2:35 MCOD/Selecting a main injury 

2:55 Household Surveys 

3:15 p.m. Break 

3:30 Occupational Injury 

3:50 Diagnosis Matrix and multiple injury 

 4:10 Disability 

4:30 p.m. Wrap up and what are the next steps Van Gogh/Pissaro

5:00 p.m. Meeting Adjourn Van Gogh/Pissaro

xii
xiii
Contents 

Preface ............................................................................................................................... iii 

Acknowledgements..............................................................................................................v

List of Participants............................................................................................................ vii 

Meeting agenda.................................................................................................................. xi

Introduction...................................................................................................................... 1-1 

What is an injury? ......................................................................................................... 2-1 

ICE Workgroup project areas 

ICE Injury Indicators Group (ICEIInG) – Progress Report, aspirations, goals, 

and strategy development .......................................................................................... 3-1 

Selecting a main injury from among the multiple causes of death.................................. 4-1 

Household Injury Survey Comparison............................................................................. 5-1 

Occupational ICE on Injury............................................................................................. 6-1 

Proposed methodology for building multiple injury profiles (MIP)................................ 7-1 

Strategic Planning 

Strategic Planning Work Group – Summary of Efforts to Date ...................................... 8-1 

Five-Year Strategic Plan for ICE on Injury Statistics Components ................................ 9-1 

Disability 

Incorporating Disability Measures Into Injury Measurement........................................ 10-1 

ICE Updates 

Results of the ICD-10 bridge coding study in England and Wales ............................... 11-1 

European Union Public Health Programme: 2003 to 2008 ........................................... 12-1 

International Classification of External Cause of Injuries (ICECI): an update ............. 13-1 

ECOSA Working Group on quantifying post-injury levels of functioning 

and disability............................................................................................................ 14-1 

Developing a set of indicators for injuries/accidents for the European Union: 

a practical approach ................................................................................................. 15-1 

Update on injury registration in the Nordic countries ................................................... 16-1 

Deaths Due to Terror Acts - Coding the external cause for statistical purposes ........... 17-1 

Poison-ICE Update ........................................................................................................ 18-1 

xiii
Introduction 

Lois A. Fingerhut 

The meeting was opened after welcoming participants from Australia, Austria, 

Canada, Denmark, England, France, Greece, Israel, The Netherlands, New Zealand, 

Norway, Spain, Sweden, Trinidad and the United States. Participants also represented the 

European Commission, EUROSTAT, European Consumer Safety Association (ECOSA) 

the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization. 

During the year since the World Injury Conference in May 2002, participants in 

the Injury ICE continued to work on projects identified during earlier meetings. These 

subject areas were discussed during full sessions and during breakout sessions during the 

meeting. The edition of the Injury ICE Proceedings includes a summary of the 

discussions from each of the following subject areas: 

• Development of methodologies for selecting national indicators 

• Development of methodologies for selecting a main cause of injury death 

among multiple causes 

• Development of methodologies for the analysis and presentation of 

multiple (nonfatal) injuries 

• Development of a “common” set of injury-related questions that could be 

used in household surveys across countries 

• “What is an injury?” –continuing the discussion 

• Occupational injury – ways to expand the ICE workgroup 

• Discussions of disability and injury- a potential work for the Injury ICE 

 

In August 2002, as the ICE on Injury Statistics was approaching its 10th year, the 

nearly 60 current and former ICE participants were asked their thoughts regarding the 

status of ICE and what future directions ICE should take. The following questions were 

sent via e-mail and responses were received from about half of the participants: 

• What has your role been in ICE? Do you want to increase your level of 

participation or decrease it? Why?

• What do you think the goals of the ICE on Injury Statistics should be? 

• Should the role of ICE be to facilitate specific projects for small groups of 

interested researchers or to foster larger group activities?

• How should meetings be conducted? As working groups? As symposia? Other 

ideas? How often should we meet?

• Where would we like to see ourselves going? And how will we know when we 

have gotten there? 

• Who else should be attending the meetings? How should future contacts be 

developed?

• What should our focus be? 

• How do we disseminate what we are doing?

1-1
• What type of products should we be developing? 

• With respect to the future of ICE, what would you want to see yourself involved 

in? With whom (categories, not individuals)?

• Other issues that you want to raise? 

Based on the responses to these questions, a committee comprised of several ICE 

participants and chaired by Sue Gallagher was established to draft a strategic plan for the 

Injury ICE. A draft plan was sent out prior to the April meeting and a significant amount 

of time was allocated at the meeting for input to the adoption of the draft plan, and to the 

formation of an ICE steering committee. The plan was adopted and is included in these 

Proceedings. 

Other injury-related international work that transpired during the year included 

the beginnings of a collaboration between the European Commission’s Public Health

Program’s work on injury and the ICE; discussions at the WHO Classification Center 

Head’s meeting in Brisbane (Fall 2002) on the technical status of the International 

Classification of External Causes of Injury (ICECI) vis-à-vis the ICD Family of 

Classifications. Papers from that meeting can be found at 

http://www.aihw.gov.au/international/who_hoc/index.html. The Pan American Health 

Organization (PAHO) and the CDC, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control 

(NCIPC) also initiated work on the development of indicators of violence for countries in 

Latin America. 

The papers that follow are a mark of significant progress for the Injury ICE. 

Congratulations to all! 

 

1-2
What is an injury? 

John Langley and Ruth Brenner 

Acknowledgements 

This paper is based on a presentation made to the International Collaborative Effort on Injury 

Statistics meeting in Paris 13 -14 April 2003. The authors wish to acknowledge the US 

CDC/National Center for Health Statistics and the NIH/National Institute for Child Health and 

Human Development for supporting that meeting. The helpful comments of participants as well 

as those of David Chalmers are appreciated. The Injury Prevention Research Unit is funded by 

the Health Research Council of New Zealand and the Accident Compensation Corporation. 

------------ 

Paramount to the study of any disease or phenomenon is the clear definition of the variables of 

interest. The definition of injury has been fraught with challenges and complexities. 

Importantly, injuries unlike diseases must be defined simultaneously by the causative event and 

by the resulting pathology. For example, bruising can occur in the absence of an injury event 

(e.g. in the case of sepsis or a bleeding disorder) and thus, taken alone, cannot be considered an 

injury. Similarly there are many events, such as car crashes, which result in no pathology, even 

if 'victims' are bought to an emergency department for observation. Thus, the theoretical 

definition of injury must incorporate both cause and outcome. Equally challenging is the 

operational definition of injury, for example, which diagnoses, codes or combination of codes 

from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) [1] define injury. In this paper we 

discuss strengths and shortcomings in existing theoretical and operational definitions of injury. 

Theoretical Definitions 

The theoretical definition of injury is problematic since there is no scientific basis for a 

 2- 1 
distinction between disease and injury [2]. Nevertheless there seems to be consensus in many of 

the public health orientated injury texts that the “energy definition” best describes the causes 

and pathologies of interest. That is “injury” refers to damage to the body produced by energy 

exchanges that have relatively sudden discernible effects [3]. While this seems to be a reasonable 

starting point, a number of issues remain. These issues are perhaps best explored through 

specific examples. First, what is meant by “damage to the body”. If damage to the body refers to 

tissue damage, strict adherence to the theoretical definition would lead to the exclusion of many 

events that are routinely classified as injuries. For example, ingestion of a foreign body, such as a 

coin, often results in no tissue damage and foreign bodies can be removed from other orifices 

such as the nose or ear, without damage to the surrounding tissues. Similarly, a sexual assault 

which results in no tissue damage but from which the victim experiences severe depression, will 

only be covered by the theoretical definition if the scope of bodily damage is broadened to 

include psychological damage. There would seem to be a case for such harm to be included in a 

theoretical definition given that significant numbers of those in injury research and practice 

consider this a legitimate area of concern for the field. Moreover, in New Zealand (population 

4m) at least, the agency, Accident Compensation Corporation, which has the primary mandate 

for injury prevention, rehabilitation, and compensation, compensates victims who suffer such 

harm. In the 2000/2001 financial year 267 people were compensated for psychological injury at a 

total cost $NZ 2,659,000. 

Second, consider also the meaning of “energy exchange.” Clearly a surgical incision is the result 

of intentional transfer of mechanical energy and this transfer results in tissue damage, yet, 

traditionally surgical incisions are not included in counts of intentional injuries. Perhaps, when 

the benefits of the purposely-intended injury are thought to outweigh the costs, the theoretical 

 2- 2 
definition is not applicable. But that approach is inconsistent with our approach for counting 

injury due to the lawful use of force (e.g. police), where presumably the benefits are also thought 

to outweigh the costs of using such force. In this case, however, provision is made in ICD to 

code injuries due to this cause (E970-978: Legal intervention). 

Most injury prevention experts expand the theoretical definition of injury to include not only 

bodily damage caused by transfers of energy but also damage caused by the absence of energy 

[3]. While this serves us well by bringing injuries due to a number of causes (e.g. drowning, 

hypothermia, and asphyxia) under the broad umbrella of the theoretical definition, it also 

obscures the boundaries as it could be argued that the final pathway for death of any etiology is 

ultimately an absence of energy. 

Finally, the notion that an injury must have “sudden discernable effects” leads to the exclusion of 

tissue damage due to chronic low-energy exposures (e.g. carpal tunnel syndrome) but as 

Robertson has pointed out some have modified the energy definition to include such cases [3]. 

The development of the theoretical “energy” definition of injury by Haddon represented a 

significant advance in our thinking and provided a useful basis on which to consider injury 

control measures [4]. One of its major strengths is the inclusion of both cause and outcome in the 

definition. However, as the field of injury prevention has advanced it is clear that there is now a 

need to refine the concepts outlined in this theoretical definition. 

Operational Definitions 

Arguably the most common operational definitions of injury, although rarely directly stated as 

 2- 3 
such by most authors, are all those pathologies included in the Injury and Poisoning chapter 

(XVII) of the ninth revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) or all those 

events coded to ICD Supplementary External Causes of Injury and Poisoning (commonly 

referred to as E codes) [1]. The former chapter includes all those pathologies most scientists and 

members of the public would describe as injury (e.g. fracture, dislocation, open wound). The 

latter includes all those mechanisms or events, which ‘cause’ injury (e.g. motor vehicle traffic 

crash, fall, sharp objects). 

Consider first the Injury and Poisoning chapter. The title of the chapter alone raises interesting 

issues. Many injury researchers and practitioners would consider poisoning to be one of a range 

of pathologies, which operationally define injury. That being the case why is the chapter named 

in this manner? 

The chapter includes some pathologies that are clearly not injuries. For example: 994 "Effects of 

other external causes" which includes conditions such as motion sickness, and effects of hunger; 

995 “Certain adverse effects not elsewhere classified” which includes conditions such as 

anaphylactic shock, adverse effect of drugs, and allergic reactions to foods; and 996-999 

“Complications of surgical and medical care not elsewhere classified”; The chapter also makes 

provision for “Effects of foreign bodies entering through orifice” (930-939) yet these 

classifications do not directly describe pathology and as we have already mentioned many such 

events do not result in discernable damage to the body (e.g. young child sticks a small toy up his 

nose). In other words there is no injury. Even allowing for the possibility that injury may have 

occurred, this range of codes is anomalous as it is inconsistent with our approach to other 

injuries. For example we do not have a grouping of codes for “effects of motor vehicle crashes”. 

 2- 4 
Rather we require the actual pathology to be coded. 

The converse situation also exists within ICD-9, namely that there are conditions which fall 

outside the 800-999 range but which some would classify as injury. These include 

musculoskeletal conditions related to the knee and back (717, 718, 724) and certain conditions of 

the eye (366.2). Some have argued that most of these conditions are chronic and should thus be 

excluded from an operational definition of injury, presumably on the basis that the theoretical 

definition of injury should be confined to pathologies that occur suddenly. Assuming one accepts 

this argument, it raises an interesting question. Are we to assume, for example, that all strains 

and sprains coded in the range 840-848 have occurred acutely? Given that there are no guidelines 

in this respect we feel such an assumption would be unwise. In 1999 at the International 

Collaborative Effort on Injury Statistics meeting in Washington, Pickett sought to identify all 

injury codes outside chapter XVII [5]. Various recommendations for dealing with these were 

discussed at the meeting but no consensus was reached. 

Some have argued that “Certain adverse effects not elsewhere classified” (995) and 

“Complications of surgical and medical care, not classified elsewhere” (996-999) are "medical 

injuries" and should be excluded from the definition of injury. The justification given is that the 

aetiology is different than other injuries and that these types of injuries require different means of 

prevention [6]. As has been argued elsewhere [7], neither argument is sufficient ground for 

exclusion. Rather the decision should be based on whether the injuries meet an accepted 

theoretical definition of injury. While some would in fact appear not to meet the theoretical 

“energy” definition, such as 996.0 “Mechanical complication of cardiac device, implant and 

graft” others almost certainly do, for example 998.2: “Accidental puncture or laceration during a 

 2- 5 
procedure”. Importantly, the inclusion or exclusion of “medical” injuries has dramatic effects on 

estimates of incidence. For example, in New Zealand in 1998 there were 67,428 public hospital 

discharges which had injury (800-999) as the primary diagnosis [7], and 17% of these were in 

the range 995-999. 

The ICD injury and poisoning codes do not include psychological injury. Such harm presumably 

could be covered by the ICD codes for over mental health outcomes (Mental Disorders290-319). 

In New Zealand cases with psychological injury could potentially be identified by ascertaining 

injury events using external cause codes and then searching for accompanying codes indicative 

of a relevant mental disorder. This is possible in New Zealand because hospital discharges for 

injury events are routinely assigned external cause of injury codes, even if there is no apparent 

tissue damage. However, external cause codes are not routinely assigned in many other countries 

and, even when they are assigned, it is not clear that coders routinely document psychological 

consequences of injury. 

The US Injury Surveillance Workgroup of the State and Territorial Injury Prevention Directors 

Association (STIPDA) have grappled with the above problems and have recently produced the 

inclusion/ exclusion criteria for identification of injuries from hospital discharge data [8]. A 

number of issues are worthy of note. First, no explanation is given for the exclusions/inclusions. 

For example, late effects of injuries, poisonings, toxic effects and other external causes (905-909) 

are included. This contrasts with the coding practice in New Zealand where the following 

explanation is given: “Late effects of injury and poisoning (ICD codes 905-909) are no longer 

entered as principal diagnosis; preference is given to the residual conditions, with the late effects 

entered as a secondary “diagnosis” (P8) [9]. The approach adopted in New Zealand would 

appear consistent with the instructions in ICD-9 (P501) although it must be said that those 

instructions are difficult to interpret [1]. Second, with the exception child maltreatment 

 2- 6 
syndrome (995.5), most "medical injuries" have been excluded. Third, the working group 

acknowledges that there may be codes outside the 800-999 range which qualify as injury but until 

such stage as a consensus can be reached on these codes, they recommend exclusion of these 

pathologies from injury counts. 

Consider now, the supplementary classification of external causes of injury and poisoning. 

Reliance on external cause of injury codes to operationally define injuries, has led to other 

problems. Most importantly, these codes can be used to describe events that result in little or no 

injury. This occurs most often when a person seeks medical care following an event (e.g. a car 

crash or a fall), but when the event resulted in no injury. Recent work in New Zealand has 

shown that 26% of all persons discharged from a public hospital, and whose record was assigned 

an E code, did not have a diagnostic code within the Injury and Poisoning range (800-999) [7]. 

In ICD-10 the external cause chapter is now titled “Injury and poisoning and certain other 

consequences of external causes” [10]. This is more descriptive of what has always been 

included in the chapter. 

Consider the case of drowning as an example of the definitional confusion, which arises from the 

failure to distinguish the pathology of interest from external causes, which may result in that 

pathology. Typically the term drowning is used to refer to deaths due to asphyxia in liquid. Nonfatal injury outcomes arising from similar processes are often referred to as near drownings. The 

difficulty here is that the concept of near drownings includes everything from losing your footing 

in the surf and temporarily losing control of the situation with no detectable pathology right 

through to major neurological damage as a result of asphyxia. In the latter case should we not be 

coding the actual pathology - the injury to the brain? In the former case why are we counting 

 2- 7 
these cases if there is no damage namely we do not after all code “near lacerations or near 

burns”. 

Conclusions 

Some have suggested that discussions about what is and what is not an injury is an esoteric 

exercise of interest only to nosologists and theorists. Using the New Zealand experience, 

however, this paper has demonstrated that estimates of the incidence of injury can vary 

substantially depending on one’s operational definition of injury. This has important 

implications for determining priorities, developing indicators for monitoring trends, and 

undertaking international comparisons. The International Collaborative effort on Injury Statistics 

represents an excellent international forum through which to seek international consensus on 

both the theoretical and operational definition of injury 

 2- 8 
References 

1. World Health Organization, International Classification of Diseases - 9th Revision. 1977, World 

Health Organization: Geneva. 

2. Haddon, W., Advances in the Epidemiology of Injuries as a Basis for Public Policy. Public 

Health Reports, 1980. 95(5): 411 - 421. 

3. Robertson, L.S., Injury Epidemiology. Second ed. 1998, New York: Oxford University Press. 

265. 

4. Haddon, W., Energy Damage and the Ten Countermeasure Strategies. J Trauma, 1973. 13(4): 

321 - 331. 

5. Pickett, D. Injury Codes outside Chapter 17. Proceedings of the International Collaborative Effort 

on Injury Statistics, Volume III, Pg 22-1 - 22-7, Washington DC, June 1999, US Department of 

Health and Human Services. 

6. Smith, G.S., J.A. Langlois, and J.S. Buechner, Methodological issues in using hospital discharge 

data to determine the incidence of hospitalized injuries. Am J Epidemiol, 1991. 134(10):1146-

1158. 

7. Langley, J.D., Stephenson, S.C.R., Cryer, P., et al., Traps for the unwary in estimated person 

based injury incidence. Inj Prev, 2002. 8; 332-337 . 

8. Injury Surveillance Workgroup. Consensus Recommendations for Using Hospital Discharge 

Data for Injury Surveillance, State and Territorial Injury Prevention Director Association: 

Marietta (GA) 2003. 

9. New Zealand Health Information Service Selected Morbidity Data for Publicly Funded Hospitals 

1996/97. Ministry of Health, Wellington, 1999. 

10. World Health Organization, ICD-10 International Statistical Classification of Diseases and 

Related Health Problems: Volume 1. 1992, World Health Organization: Geneva. p. 1-1243. 

 2- 9 
ICE Injury Indicators Group (ICEIInG) - Progress Report, aspirations, goals and strategy 

development 

Colin Cryer

Background 

The presentation set the scene for the Injury Indicators workshops that followed. The workshops 

were aimed at laying the foundations for the development of a strategy for the ICE Injury 

Indicators Group (ICEIInG). I covered the following: 

•some initial background regarding why we are interested in indicators. 

•an overview of some of the issues that ICE and ICEIInG have discussed. 

•work that has been carried out by ICEIInG members that is relevant to this group – 

including the validation criteria developed by ICEIInG in Washington in 2001. 

•some of the issues that we have identified that could be addressed by the group 

I then went on to set the scene for the strategy development and to propose aspirations and goals 

for ICEIInG for discussion during the workshop groups. 

Why the interest? 

I started with a quote from the editors of Public Health 1: 

“Public health systems across the world are being encouraged ... to show evidence of 

health gain. Defining accurate indicators of such health gain has become a major area for 

academics and professionals. Getting such indicators right is essential since the 

effectiveness of healthcare systems may be judged using such indicators. Perhaps more 

importantly, financial resources may flow – or be withheld – on the basis of such 

indicators” 

So if we do not get our indicators right, then financial incentives to address an important injury 

problem may be inappropriately reduced or withdrawn, and moved to less deserving areas. 

Proposed definition 

I have failed to find a good definition of an injury indicator from the literature, so I proposed the 

following: 

“An injury indicator is a summary measure which denotes or reflects, directly or 

indirectly, variations and trends in injuries, or injury-related or injury control-related

phenomenon.” 

Why the concern? 

I presented Figure 1 at the last ICE meeting to illustrate why we are concerned to ‘get our 

indicators right’. It showed trends in 4 indicators that are aimed at reflecting the same

phenomenon, namely the incidence of injury on the roads. The indicators include two official 

New Zealand indicators and two produced by the Injury Prevention Research Unit (IPRU) – an 

academic unit based in Dunedin, New Zealand. They all presented MVTC injuries, but used a 

variety of measures of MVTC injuries, and showed the percentage change in the indicator from

the reference date of 1988. 

 3-1 
Governments are interested in knowing whether targets have been met. What this graph 

illustrated was that different conclusions could have been reached if the indicators produced by 

the IPRU were used rather than the official indicators. If, for example, the target date was 1996, 

and the target was a 10% reduction in injuries, then on the basis of the official indicators, the 

target would have been met. However, if the IPRU indicators had been used in their place, the 

target would not have been met. I suggested that Government would have quite contrasting 

reactions to these two situations; it could provoke a contrasting response in terms of new policy 

and investment. So the choice of indicator does matter. (I cannot say definitely which are the best 

indicators; however, if I apply our validation criteria (see below) to each of these indicators, the 

suggestion is that the IPRU indicators are more valid.) 

Figure 1: Percentage deviation from 1988 base in four New Zealand road safety indicators. 

-45%

-40%

-35%

-30%

-25%

-20%

-15%

-10%

-5%

0%

5%

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

NZ1: Reported MVTC Injuries (per

100,000 popn)

NZ2: Crude Hospitalisations - number

Age-Adjusted Rate of

Hospitalisations by Max AIS=3+

Age-Adjusted Rate of

Hospitalisations by Max AIS=4+

Overview of work 

I presented a summary of work by some members of ICEIInG relating to injury indicators and / 

or their development, starting with where the 2001 ICE meeting got to. 

ICE meeting, Washington 2001 

 3-2 
Much of the discussion on injury indicators at the 2001 ICE meeting was around getting 

agreement on criteria for validating injury indicators. Validity can be judged in a number of 

different ways including content, concurrent, and predictive validity. The criteria that we 

discussed would be used to judge content validity. What we agreed was that an ideal indicator 

should: 

•Have a case definition based on diagnosis 

•Focus on serious injury – however that is defined 

•Have, as far as possible, unbiased case ascertainment 

•Be derived from data that are representative of the target population 

•Be based on existing data systems (or it should be practical to develop new data systems 

as the basis for the indicator) 

•Be fully specified. 

For a full statement of the criteria, see Box 1. Many of the above criteria focus solely on 

indicators of injury incidence, and within that on the characteristics of the incident cases. 

 3-3 
Box 1: the criteria to be included in the validation tool for indicators of injury incidence. 

1. The indicator should reflect the occurrence of injury satisfying some case definition of anatomical

or physiological damage. 

2. The indicator should be based on events that are associated with significantly increased risk of 

impairment, functional limitation, disability or death, decreased quality of life, or increased cost 

(ie. serious injury). 

3. The probability of a case being ascertained should be independent of social, economic, and 

demographic factors, as well as service supply and access factors. 

4. The indicator should be derived from data that are inclusive or representative of the target 

population that the indicator aims to reflect. 

5. It should be possible to use existing data systems, or it should be practical to develop new 

systems, to provide data for computing the indicator. 

6. The indicator should be fully specified to allow calculation to be consistent at any place and at 

any time. 

3-country collaboration 

Following the 2001 Washington meeting, a collaborative piece of work between 3 countries 

(Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom) was organised 2. That work included the following 

objective: 

To investigate whether our content validation criteria show consistency between raters 

when tested on a class of injury indicators, namely national non-fatal indicators used in 

setting road safety targets. 

We focussed on these indicators because all but one of this group had worked previously with 

national road safety indicators or with the data on which they are based. Six road safety 

indicators (2 from each country) were assessed by the 3 raters using our 6 validation criteria. 

Results were tabulated and inspected for consistency. (Consistency across raters in the

assessments was seen to be a desirable quality, just as reliability of a measurement instrument is 

desirable). Our experience of working with these criteria has led to the identification of some

improvements that could be made to the validation criteria and to some of issues, for further 

consideration. 

Australia

 3-4 

In Australia, James Harrison and Malinda Steenkamp carried out a technical review of the then 

current NHPA injury indicators and data sources. Aspects of this work were presented by 

Malinda at the last ICE meeting in Montreal. The full report was published last year 3. Their goal 

was to identify actions and processes required to deliver improvements in indicators and data 

sources. In order to get to this point they carried out a situation analysis of indicators and data 

sources, developed a framework for specification of indicators, identified criteria that indicators 

of injury incidence should possess, and assessed their current indicator specifications against 
these criteria. The criteria that they chose were based on the criteria discussed at the 2001 ICE 

meeting and were as follows: 

1. Case definition should be in terms of specified anatomical or physiological damage. 

2. Cases included should be all of those that the indicator aims to reflect, or a well defined 

sample of them. 

3. Probability of case ascertainment should be independent of extraneous factors. 

The work of ICEIInG, therefore, is contributing, in at least one country, to work to improve the 

validity of indicators. 

Denmark 

In Denmark, work of Birthe Frimodt-Moller, Anne Mette Johansen and Bjarne Laursen resulted 

in a paper presented at the 6th World Conference last year 4. The aim of the work was: 

“To investigate non-fatal unintentional injury cases in view of the proposed [ICE] 

characteristics in order to discuss the issue [of the validity of incidence measures] 

further.” 

The work was based on data from the Danish Injury Register, which contains detailed 

information on all non-fatal injuries that attend 5 hospital A&Es (EDs) for treatment. The 6 

ICEIInG criteria were used to assess an indicator (injury incidence rate) derived from this source. 

Their conclusion included the following: that the ICEIInG validation criteria might be 

complemented with a tool to measure injury severity in ED treated cases. They state that: “A 

measure for injury severity – other than death or hospital admission – must be applied, in order 

to satisfy the criterion for the indicator associating injury with increased risk of impairment, 

functional limitation, disability, decreased quality of life or increased cost.” The use of severity 

measures and severity thresholds when developing indicators of injury incidence based on 

service utilisation data will also reduce service utilisation effects. 

New Zealand 

John Langley and Shaun Stephenson have been very active in New Zealand in addressing 

problems associated with the definition of robust and valid indicators of injury incidence. Four 

pieces of work were outlined to give a flavour of a wider portfolio. 

(1) Similar validation criteria to those agreed by ICE were applied to indicators based on various 

sources: A&E, death registrations, hospital inpatients and compensation entitlement claims. 

This work concluded that “If the objective is to track a nation’s overall injury record over 

time it would be extremely desirable to choose indicators based on deaths, anatomically 

serious injury, and serious disablement” 5. 

(2) In a second study, trends in official indicators were contrasted with trends in selected threatto-life indicators 6. The authors concluded that: “Overall the results illustrate that unvalidated 

indicators can be misleading and flag the need to identify more valid indicators of non-fatal 

injury incidence which can be applied to large administrative databases”. 

(3) Trends in hospital admissions as a result of injury are often used as indicators of the trends in 

the incidence of non-fatal injury events in the population. However, a range of factors other 

than injury incidence may influence trends in hospitalisations. John and Shaun are currently 

working on a project to investigate whether trends in traumatic brain injury (TBI) resulting in 

hospital admission have been influenced by factors other than changes in population 

incidence of TBI and to estimate the size of the effect of these factors. 

 3-5 
(4) When developing indicators of injury incidence based on hospital inpatient data, then a 

natural consequence of indicator development aimed at satisfying the validity criteria is to 

focus on serious injury. There is a desire therefore to identify a ‘good’ severity scoring 

system that is applicable to routinely collected data. The focus of this work was to compare 

four injury severity scaling methods in terms of their discrimination and calibration. Those 

that had the best characteristics were identified 7. 

So this work takes things a step further in attempting to identify severity scoring systems that are 

applicable to very large data sets, and recognises that indicators based on health service data may 

need to be defined in terms of their injury severity. 

UK 

The indicator work that we have done in England has focussed around the national public health 

strategy in the following ways: 

• We criticised the definitions of the serious injury indicators used in the draft and final strategy - 

in both instances, case definition was based on an injured person’s use of health services 8 9. 

•In the first paper we proposed an interim solution to the problem of finding a valid indicator of 

serious injury – namely the use of serious long-bone fracture 8, which exhibited good 

characteristics when judged against the validation criteria (although it does have its limitations). 

•McClure criticised our proposal of serious-long bone fracture 10 – in our view for the wrong 

reasons. We responded to this criticism in our Public Health article: ‘Measure for measure’ 11, 

and took the debate further stating: 

“Any new indicator that is developed should be based on an explicit definition of an 

injury, from which it should be clear which events will be captured by the indicator... For 

indicators of non-fatal injury occurrence, a case definition that is based on some severity 

threshold is sensible...” and “...before newly proposed indicators are promulgated, they 

should have been subjected to formal validation”. 

•The public health community in the UK have acknowledged the importance of this issue of 

valid indicators through the editorial in Public Health last year 1. 

 

Coming back to our serious long bone fracture indicator. As a post-script, I have just heard that 

the English Department of Health are to recommend the use of this as a child health indicator to 

the Commission for Health Audit and Improvement. If accepted, local health communities will 

be performance managed on the basis of their rates of serious long bone fracture. Furthermore, 

the pan-European CHILD project is also including the use of serious long bone fracture as an 

indicator of child health across Europe. 

Issues 

I suggested some of the issues that may be encompassed by the strategy include the following: 

Issue 1: the further development of the validation criteria 

Indicators are developed and used for several different purposes, eg. target setting, monitoring, 

priority setting, and evaluation. One question is, can we use the same validation criteria for 

indicators that are used for each type of application, or are the relevant criteria dependent on the 

application?

 3-6 
Secondly, in developing these criteria, we have focused solely on measures of injury incidence. 

Should the scope be widened to encompass indicators for the measurement of hazard exposure, 

or the impact of the introduction of injury control initiatives?

Issue 2: Methods for validating indicators 

What methods should we be using to validate existing or developing indicators? If we think that 

the time trends for a particular indicator present a biased picture, what methods should we use to 

investigate this? 

Issue 3: What implications does this have for our choice of questions in population surveys. 

At the last meeting, some of us argued that population surveys aimed at capturing injury 

incidence should not use questions based on service utilisation. For example, we argued against 

questions such as: “Of the number of times that you were injured, how many of those times was 

the injury serious enough that you consulted the medical profession?”

Aspirations and Goals 

The following statement of aspirations was suggested for discussion: 

Our aspirations are that we develop a strategy for the ICE Injury Indicators Group that has: 

• relevance internationally; 

• supports national activity; 

• supports bids for research funding. 

And that our goal (again for discussion) is: 

To identify reliable and valid indicators relevant to injury prevention aimed at 

• Target setting 

• Monitoring 

• Surveillance 

• Priority setting 

• Evaluation 

• International information exchange. 

Strategy development 

What follows was agreed during the workshop sessions. 

The aspirations and goals were agreed. The proposed scope of ICEIInG is covered by the 

following headings: 

z Dissemination 

z Indicators of Injury Incidence 

z Data / coding systems that give an ‘unbiased’ picture over place, time, culture, 

demographic group 

z Indicator development – implications for data collection 

z Dealing with service effects and other biases within large administrative data sets 

z Validation of injury indicators 

z Making linkages to other groups 

 3-7 
Dissemination 

The use of the website was seen as a key plank of the ICEIInG strategy. It should be used to 

present: 

– Best practice in indicator specification, based on what we currently know. 

– List of goals that we should work towards 

– List of projects 

z Published 

z Ongoing (including their strengths and limitations) 

On the last of these, John Langley and James Harrison suggested that projects be offered for 

(near) replication. In so doing, the limits of local data should be made known, and 

recommendations made of how indicators / methods could be improved. So, to this end, it was 

suggested that we encourage everyone in ICE to: 

1. share their work 

2. make links with other groups involved in indicator development and make these known to 

ICEIInG. 

Indicators of Injury Incidence 

The following were identified as key in the development of indicators of injury incidence: 

z Case definition for numerators based on 

– Threat to life 

– Threat for disablement 

– Severity thresholds 

z Denominator data 

– Measures of exposure (including how to capture this information) 

Data / coding systems that give an ‘unbiased’ picture over place, time, culture, demographic 

group 

It was agreed that ICEIInG should not consider the availability and quality of data in its own 

right, but only as these impact on indicators. Issues that are relevant include: 

– Robustness of indicators to changing coding systems over time 

– Valid comparisons between countries 

The goal is to get a clear picture of the injury problem in terms of, for example, how the problem

is changing over time, and differs between country or state. 

Indicator development – implications for data collection 

Key issues that need to be addressed are: 

z Existence of data sources 

z Collection and coding of key data 

John Langley suggested we need to identify countries who have data that supports the 

development of valid indicators, as well as what those valid indicators are. Also, that these be 

made known to countries that do not collect data to support the production of particular valid 

indicators, in order to persuade policy makers in those countries to influence a change in their 

collections. 

 3-8 
Dealing with service effects and other biases within large administrative data sets 

It was agreed that the description of, and if possible the quantification of bias, caused by service 

effects should be included in the scope, and that the following actions should run from these: 

– Alerting people to known effects 

– Alerting people to projects to identify (?quantify) biases 

An example of the latter is the New Zealand TBI project, referred to earlier under the New 

Zealand subsection of the ‘Overview of work’. 

Validation of injury indicators 

The further development of methods for the validation of indicators was regarded as important. 

Examples include: 

– Completion of our current work 

– Further development of the content validation criteria 

– Modification of the validation criteria for application to: 

z Other purposes, eg. priority setting 

z Other types of indicators, eg. Process and impact relating to injury control 

initiatives 

Make linkages to other groups 

We should make links with other groups to share successes and to ensure that we complement 

each others work. This includes, for example, the following projects: ECHI / ECHI-2, and the 

indicator work being developed as part of the EC Public Health Programme. 

Saakje Mulder gave her view of how the EU-based work could interact with that of ICEIInG. 

She explained that Birthe Frimodt Moller was drafting an umbrella document as the first stage of 

a bid to the EC for funding. Maria Segui Gomez and Eleni Petridou explained that they are 

drafting a project proposal that would fit under that umbrella proposal. The projects under the 

umbrella include those based on mortality, hospital admissions and ED data. Other countries 

could be included in this work – the limitation is that at least 3 member countries are involved. It 

was proposed that ICEIInG should offer to be an advisory group for this project. (Since the ICE 

meeting, Birthe Frimodt Moller has invited Colin Cryer to be a representative of ICEIInG on the 

Advisory Panel to the EC project, should it be funded.) 

Other topics from our discussions 

These include: 

 3-9 
• Particular focus on hospital data – eg. Do trends in indicators based on hospitalisation reflect 

trends in incidence 

• If indicators of injury incidence are based on severity measures – which severity measure 

should be used?

• Opportunities of data linkage for indicator development. 

• Exploiting longitudinal and / or linked data sets for indicator development: 

It was felt that linked data sources, as well as longitudinal sources, should be exploited for the 

development of indicators. There was discussion of potential data sources for developing threat 

for disablement measures based on ICD-codes. These include:

• New Zealand ACC claims

• Israel compensation claims – these are also ICD coded 

• A US longitudinal study that includes 8000 people ICD coded followed up at 3, 6 and 12 

months. At each time, the SF36, FCI and return to work will be measured. 

• A Spanish (Navarra) study of injured persons who visit forensic physicians to establish levels 

of incapacity (and so their right to benefits). At the visit, injured people will be ICD and FCI 

coded and then will be followed prospectively. 

The way forward 

John Langley expressed the view that any work to be done needs funding. He indicated that, to 

date, funding has tended to be from local sources. For example, his work to investigate severity 

measures was originally funded from NZ sources. He is now extending that work through 

collaboration with James Harrison, who has persuaded his local (Australian) funders to support 

this extended work. The case was made on the basis of the local benefits that will accrue. Lois 

Fingerhut asked that the methodology be put on the ICE website eventually. 

The editor of one of the major injury journals had been approached by Susan Mackenzie and 

asked whether there may be the opportunity to have a regular column in the journal that 

describes ICE activities. The editor had shown definite interest in having a column on the 

journal’s website, with possible interest in a regular short column in the journal. The editor was 

more tentative about the latter because of space limitations. 

Some questions that arose from these discussions were: How do we get active participation 

across ICEIInG members? How can we move the ICEIInG work forward; what should be the 

balance between paid and unpaid activities in moving ICEIInG forward? Some investment in 

unfunded ICEIInG work is worthwhile since there are benefits in linking our local (national) 

work to an international group and its agenda. 

In order to encourage sharing of relevant information, it is important that the agreed scope of our 

activities be made clear to ICEIInG members. Following this, ICEIInG members should be 

encouraged to share relevant work. This should be made available, at least, on the ICE web page. 

Maria Segui Gomez identified a potential problem of too much sharing, ie. being overwhelmed 

with too much material on which one is requested to comment. One possible solution would be 

to just make approaches to highly selected groups of people. An alternative approach would be 

for an author to notify others in ICEIInG of work on which comments are wanted in a brief 

email. Those who are interested could request the paper from the sender. 

 3-10
Funding 

It is often more difficult to secure funding when collaboration is wide. An alternative is to work 

towards the harmonisation of local projects each supported by local funds. We need to convince 

local funders to fund the work, and reference to ICE can be helpful. There may be the 

opportunity for synergy between the ICE and EC work, and consultation would take place after 

the meeting. 

Maria Segui Gomez asked about the purpose of the funding for ICEIInG. If it is to fund the 

liaison and communication roles, then relatively small sums are involved. On the other hand, 

project funding would involve very large sums. Previous communication and discussion implied 

that the way of working was for members of ICEIInG to get together to develop and organise 

funding for specific projects, and to use ICEIInG as a reference group, for comment and 

approval as an ICE project. For this model, only the communication strategy would need 

funding. 

Next steps? 

It seemed that the primary focus of ICEIInG should be communication, and an important next 

step is to get the wherewithal to support this communication strategy. 

Other discussion included the following areas: 

• International funding of a study of the injury experience of a number of countries using 

indicators of injury incidence, whose definition is based on sentinel diagnoses (eg. serious 

long bone fracture). 

• Identification of countries with injury hospitalisation data with diagnostic coding that can 

push the agenda forward. 

• The need for a template for our web page to capture information on relevant projects that are 

taking place.

References

1. Sim F, Mackie P. Editorial. It were to be wished the flaws were fewer... But the main thing 

is, does it hold good measure? Public Health 2002;116:251. 

2. Cryer C, Langley J, Jarvis S, Mackenzie S. Injury indicators: a validation tool. 6th World 

Conference on Injury Prevention and Control. Montreal, Canada: University of Montreal, 

2002:1107. 

3. Harrison J, Steenkamp M. Technical review and documentation of current NHPA injury 

indicators and data sources. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2002. 

4. Frimodt-Moller B, Johansen AMT, Laursen B. Characteristics of indicators for occurrence of 

non-fatal unintentional injury. Discussion on proposed criteria for ideal indicators. 6th World 

Conference on Injury Prevention and Control. Montreal, Canada: University of Montreal, 

2002. 

 3-11
5. Langley J, Cryer C. Indicators for injury surveillance. Australasian Epidemiologist

2000;7.1:5-9. 

6. Langley J, Stephenson S, Cryer C. Measuring road safety performance: monitoring trends in 

non-fatal injury. AEA 11th Annual Scientific Meeting. Wellington, New Zealand, 2002. 

7. Stephenson SCR, Langley JD, Civil ID. Comparing measures of injury severity for use with 

large databases. Journal of Trauma Injury, Infection and Critical Care 2002;53:326-332. 

8. Cryer PC, Jarvis SN, Edwards P, Langley JD. How can we reliably measure the occurrence 

of non-fatal injury? International Journal of Consumer and Product Safety 1999;6(4):183-

191. 

9. Cryer PC, Jarvis SN, Edwards P, Langley JD. Why the Government was right to change the 

'Our Healthier Nation' accidental injury target. Public Health 2000;114:232-237. 

10. McClure RJ, Peel N, Kassulke D, Neale R. Appropriate indicators for injury control? Public 

Health 2002;116:252-256. 

11. Cryer C, Langley JD, Stephenson SCR, Jarvis SN, Edwards P. Measure for measure. The 

quest for valid indicators of non-fatal injury. Public Health 2002;116:257-262. 

 3-12
Selecting a main injury from among the multiple causes of death 

Margaret Warner 

Background

The multiple causes of death and injury working group has been looking at different

methods of analyzing injury-specific multiple cause data. One approach is to analyze all 

the data and another is to select a main injury. Limor Aharonson-Daniel is working on 

the former and has developed methods of fully utilizing the Barell matrix by creating 

injury profiles. This work was presented at this ICE meeting. 

There are instances were it may be methodologically wise to select a main injury. For 

instance, not all countries collect or code multiple injury diagnosis from the death 

certificate. When comparing data from a country with only a main injury reported, the 

most appropriate comparison would be to a main injury in the comparison country. Also 

if the number of injuries of the injuries between the comparison groups differs because of 

reporting and/or coding rather than the actual trauma to the body, it may be inappropriate 

to compare all injuries. Also, for tabulation purposes, standard practice in some countries 

such as England and Wales is to select and analyze a main injury so there is a single 

unique description of each death. 

Selecting a main injury from among the multiple cause data is likely to result in a loss of

information about the death. It has been shown repeatedly that as the number of injuries 

increases, the likelihood of death increases (Baker, 1974; Aharonson-Daniel, 2003). 

Therefore, analyzing all the data from a death can give a lot more information about the 

severity of the incident and in many cases, may be the best approach. None-the-less, 

there remain comparisons where data are imbalanced in the number of injuries recorded 

and analyzing all data may lead to incorrect conclusions. 

After the June 1999 meeting of the ICE on Injury Statistics, Chris Cox and Cleo Rooney 

compared all multiple cause injury data from four countries – the US, Sweden, Scotland, 

4-1
and England & Wales (Cox and Rooney, 2000). They presented the results at the World 

Injury Conference in New Delhi. A copy of the presentation is available upon request. 

One of the striking findings from that paper was the difference in the number of injuries 

recorded. On the two extremes were the US with about 50% of the death certificates 

having more than one injury listed and England & Wales with only about 25% with more 

than one listed. 

ICD Guidelines 

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) manual offers some guidelines for 

selecting a main injury from among multiple injuries coded. This is found in the section 

on the “Nature of injury”. In ICD-9, the selection is based on a Precedence list that 

classifies all injury diagnoses into one of seven ranked categories (ICD-9, Volume 1, p. 

730, IX. Nature of injury). The injury in the highest ranked category is then chosen as 

the main injury. The ICD-9 Precedence List was replaced in ICD-10 with less explicit 

selection guidelines, referred to here as ICD-10 Selection Guidelines (ICD-10, Volume 2, 

pp. 86-87, 4.2.10 Nature of injury). The guidelines generally indicate to select the injury 

that initiates the death, similar to the guidelines for selecting the underlying cause of 

death. 

At the ICE meeting in April 2001, the work group decided it was important to compare 

methods of selecting a main injury. The research was carried out at NCHS by Margaret 

Warner, Melissa Heinen, Lois Fingerhut, and Chris Cox and presented at the World 

Injury Conference in Montreal in May 2002. Three methods of selecting a main injury 

were tested: 1) the first- listed on the death certificate; 2) ICD-9 Precedence list; 3) ICD10 Selection Guidelines. The main injury selected using the different methods was 

compared to see how often the same injury was selected using the different methods. 

Multiple cause of death data from the United States in 1999 were used for the analysis. A 

sample of 500 deaths with more than one unique ICD-10 codes within S00-S99, T00-

T35, T79, T90-T98 with an underlying cause of death of injury was randomly selected. 

4-2
Little more than chance agreement between the methods was found. This was expected 

assuming the death certificates are completed correctly as the three methods tested are 

selecting the injury diagnosis based on different criteria. The first-listed method of 

selection should be selecting the immediate cause-of-death. The ICD-10 Injury Selection 

Guidelines should be selecting the initiating cause-of-death. The Precedence List was 

intended to select the most severe injury. A listing of the pros and cons for the three 

methods of selection from the presentation is reproduced as Table 1. 

Mortality Reference Group

The Mortality Reference Group (MRG) has been discussing the changes to these 

selection guidelines or several years and the Nature of Injury section in general 

(Johansson, 1998) and has several concerns about the changes in instructions between 

ICD-9 and ICD-10. They have requested the assistance of the ICE on Injury on these 

matters. The MRG was established at the 1997 meeting of the WHO Classification 

Centre Heads as part of an updating mechanism for the ICD. Members of the MRG 

decide on applications and interpretation of the ICD to mortality and recommend updates 

to Update Reference Committee (URC). The URC is a separate advisory body to the 

WHO Secretariat and the Center Heads. A memo on the MRG’s issues with the section 

on the nature of injury and recommended changes is available upon request. The 

following are the MRG’s key concerns with the section: 

1. loss of detail when specific injuries are grouped into a broad “multiple injury” 

title, particularly when some of the specific injuries reflect minor injuries

2. lack of instruction on coding simultaneous injuries such as might be incurred in 

traffic incidents 

3. lack of instruction on what to do when injures are reported in both Part I and Part 

II of the death certificate 

4. confusion about intent of instructions 

Item 1 refers to the following instruction in ICD-10 4.2.10. 

4-3
When more than one body region is involved, coding should be made to the relevant 

category of Injuries involving multiple body regions (T00-T06). This applies both to the 

same type of injury and to more than one kind of injury to different body regions. 

Table 2 includes examples from Cleo Rooney in England of the application of the 

guidelines. The examples are particularly troubling as much of the detail of the 

individual codes is lost. For instance, if there is a head injury (S09.9) and neck injury 

(S19.9), this rule instructs that the main injury should be Other specified injuries 

involving multiple body regions (T06.8). According to Andre L’hours of the World 

Health Organization who was participating at the ICE on Injury meeting in Paris, the 

rationale behind the creation of the rule was so the valuable information about the 

multiple injuries involved in the death was not lost when selecting a main injury. The 

rationale is sound however, in practice, the multiple injury codes (T-codes) are very nonspecific. Mr. L’hours concurred with this upon seeing examples from a real world 

application. He did state however, his concern over losing the data on multiple injuries if 

a main injury is selected from one of the listed causes. The Mortality Reference Group 

draft memo with the recommended updates proposes eliminating this rule. 

Prior to the ICE on Injury meeting, Lois Fingerhut and Margaret Warner as well as Cleo 

Rooney (as a representative of both the MRG and the ICE on Injury) met with selected 

MRG members to discuss the main injury selection rules and the draft MRG memo. 

Based on that meeting the following recommendations for selecting a main injury were 

drafted (although clearly not yet in ICD parlance): 

1) Eliminate trivial and superficial injuries from consideration of selection 

2) If there is an obvious causal sequence, then choose the injury which led to the 

death 

3) Select from among remaining injuries using the precedence list 

4) Select first mentioned if there are several injuries at the same level of precedence 

The MRG agreed to draft the recommendations into proper rules. They also agreed to 

develop a list of the trivial and superficial injuries. The MRG wants input from the ICE 

4-4
on Injury on drafting a Precedence List similar to the ICD-9 list for ICD-10. Based on 

the study of the three selection methods using US multiple cause data, Margaret Warner 

suggested that some consideration be given to the possibility of eliminating from

selection any non-specific codes if more specific codes apply. It was suggested that these 

might be eliminated based on the Precedence List so a specific rule may not be needed. It 

was agreed that the new rules should be tested before they are implemented to test this 

and other assumptions. 

Working groups plan 

 

In Paris, the ICE on injury working group agreed in principle with the MRG’s 

recommendations. However, the working group felt that it was important to consider 

options to keep the information about multiple injuries since we know that two injuries 

are more severe then one. The working group therefore proposed that we gather more 

detail about common combinations of injuries from multiple countries. 

Action item 1) Determine if common combinations of injuries account for large 

proportions of injury deaths and to determine if the common combinations differed by 

country. The method of exploration is an international comparison of multiple cause 

data. Jamaica, Israel, Australia, US, and England & Wales agreed to supply data. All 

multiple cause data from the countries will be analyzed and then stratified by the number 

of injuries to determine if there are common combinations of single codes. If common 

combinations between countries do exist, they may be recommended as T-codes and will 

at least be useful in understanding the loss of data by selecting a single injury. 

The ICE on injury working group decided that it would be possible to draft a precedence 

list. The origin of the ICD-9 Precedence List is unknown at this point, but has always 

been assumed to be a ranking of severity. After discussing the ICD-9 Precedence List 

(which has 7 levels) and then comparing it to other severity rankings using the combined 

expertise in the working group, it was decided that the ranking was based largely on body 

region. The Anatomic Profile was suggested as having many of the attributes that the 

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group agreed that the Precedence List should have and it was suggested that the 

Anatomic Profile be used as a basis for the Precedence List (Copes, 1990). 

The Anatomic Profile is an empirically derived grouping of body regions containing the 

most serious injuries. It divides the body into 4 regions – A. head/brain and spinal cord, 

B. Thoracic and Front of neck, C. Abdomen and pelvis, spine without cord, pelvic 

fracture, femoral artery, crush above knee, popliteal artery; D. Face and all other regions. 

These are ranked in order of severity based on the probability of death from the Multiple 

Trauma Outcome Study (Copes, 1990). There are currently ICD-9-CM codes associated 

with each group. 

Action item 2) Draft ICD-10 Precedence List. The Anatomic Profile (AP) will be looked 

at as a possible basis for the Precedence List. The ICD-9-CM codes of the AP will be 

translated to ICD-10 using the WHO Translator and using the results from the US ICD-9 

to ICD-10 Comparability Study. The translation will be reviewed for consistency 

between the ICD versions and the clinical modifications and looked at in detail. 

Depending on availability this may be compared to the AIS-2003 translated to ICD-10. 

Action item 3) Trivial and superficial list – MRG has agreed to come up with the list of

trivial and superficial injuries. The working group will supply the MRG with the ICD-10 

codes that are AIS 1. We would like to provide the MRG with AIS-2003 codes mapped 

to ICD-10 if available. However, if they are unavailable as a very rough guide we will 

supply a rough list mapped from AIS-90 to ICD-9-CM using ICDMAP and then 

translated from ICD-9-CM to ICD-10 using the WHO Translator ICD9 to ICD10. This 

will be circulated to the MRG to compare to their list. 

All agreed that other international experts in injury related research should validate the 

lists. 

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Action item 4) The working group will circulate the Lists to medical examiners and 

trauma surgeons and other researchers in their and other countries to review. 

All agreed that testing the selection rules as developed by the MRG with the Precedence 

List and Trivial and Superficial List on real world data was sensible. 

Action item 5) The working group agreed that the rules should be tested using a sample 

of data from a variety of countries. 

Conclusions

Selecting a main injury from the multiple causes is necessary for international injury 

comparisons in certain circumstances. For instance, some countries only code a main 

injury and when comparing to such country, a main injury should be selected from

among the multiple injuries using the same methods. The ICD has rules for selecting a 

main injury when the data are ICD coded. The selection rules changed between ICD-9 

and ICD-10. The Mortality Reference Group has some issues with these new rules and 

the ICE on Injury working group on multiple cause data has agreed to assist the MRG 

with the recommending changes to the rules by providing a Precedence List. The ICE on 

Injury Statistics believes it is important not to lose data about multiple injuries so the 

working group will look at multiple cause data from several countries to determine if 

common combinations of injuries exist. 

4-7
References: 

Aharonson-Daniel L, Boyko V, Ziv A, Avitzour M, Peleg K. A new approach to the 

analysis of multiple injuries using data from a national trauma registry. Inj Prev. 2003 

Jun;9(2):156-62. 

Baker SP, O’Neill B, Haddon W, & Long W (1974). The Injury Severity Score: A 

method for describing patients with multiple injuries and evaluating emergency care. J 

Trauma, 14: 187-196. 

Cox C, Rooney C, Fingerhut L. What can multiple cause of death analyses tell us about 

patterns and comparability of injury mortality from a variety of countries? 5th World 

Injury Conference, New Delhi, India. March 8, 2000. 

Copes WS, Champion HR, Sacco WJ, Lawnick MM, Gann DS, Gennarellli T, 

MacKenzie EJ, Schwaitzberg S. (1990). Progress in characterizing anatomic injury. J 

Trauma, 30(10): 1200-1207. 

Johannson LA. (1998). Coding multiple injuries as the underlying cause of death. Paper 

from the Meeting of Heads of WHO Collaborating Centres for the Classification of 

Diseases. Paris, France 13-19 October 1998. 

Warner M, Heinen MA, Fingerhut LA, Cox CS. Selecting a Main Injury Diagnosis in the 

Multiple Cause-of-Death File, United States 1999. 6th World Injury Conference, 

Montreal, Canada. May, 2002. 

World Health Organization. Manual of the International Statistical Classification of 

Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death, Based on the Recommendations of the Ninth 

Revision Conference, 1975, Geneva: World Health Organization, 1977. Volume 1, p. 

730, IX. Nature of injury 

4-8
World Health Organization. International Statistical Classification of Diseases and 

Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1992, 

Volume II, pp. 86-87, 4.2.10 Nature of injury 

World Health Organization, WHO Translator for ICD-9 to ICD-10. 

4-9
Table 1. A comparison of the ICD-9 and ICD-10 methods of selecting a main injury 

ICD-9 Precedence list (ICD-9, Volume 1, p. 730, IX. Nature of injury) 

Pros

- Can be consistently applied 

Con 

-Assumption about the order of severity has not been tested. For instance, “multiple 

injuries” (get code) are in the last ranked category but may be the most severe. 

- Does not include poisonings by drugs, medicaments, and biological substances (T36-

T50), toxic effects of substances chiefly non medicinal as to source (T51-T65), other and 

unspecified effects of external causes (T66-T78) and complications of surgical and 

medical care, not elsewhere classified (T80-T78). 

-The order the injury appears on the death certificate plays a major role in the injury 

diagnosis selected. When using the Precedence List approximately 30 percent of the 

sample deaths had more than one injury listed in the top ranking category, thus for lack of 

direction from the ICD-9, the first listed diagnosis in top ranking category of the 

Precedence List was chosen. 

ICD-10 Injury Selection Guidelines (ICD-10, Volume 2, pp. 86-87) 

PROS: 

-WHO endorses this approach. 

-Some countries are currently using this method, such as England 

and Wales. 

CONS: 

-For some causes, the injury sequence is inherent. For other causes the injuries occur 

simultaneously, and this selection method is less appropriate. 

-Rules may not be applied consistently. 

-The order the injury appears on the death certificate plays a major role in the injury 

diagnosis selected. 

First Listed Diagnosis 

4-10
PRO: 

- Easy to use 

CONS: 

- Assumes death certificates were filled out correctly and that the first listed is truly the 

immediate cause-of-death. 

- The death certificates are known to be filled out inconsistently, which results in 

misclassification. 

4-11
Table 2. Multiple injury problem: EXAMPLES OF DEATH CERTIFICATES AND 

MAIN INJURY SELECTED FOLLOWING THE ICD-10 MAIN INJURY SELECTION RULE 

(SHOWN BELOW). PROVIDED BY CLEO ROONEY AND BRENDA SMITH FROM ENGLAND & 

WALES 

FROM ICD-10, volume 2, section 4.2.10 Nature of injury, pp. 86-87 

“When more than one kind of injury to a single body in S00-S99, T08-T35, T66-T79 is 

mentioned and there is no clear indication as to which caused death, the General 

Principle and the Selection Rules should be applied in the normal way.” 

Examples with the secondary cause as T068 

T068 = Other specified injuries involving multiple body regions 

Example 1 

1a Head and Neck Injuries S099 S199 

 Fall at Home W190 

 Verdict = Accidental 

 u/cause = W190 Secondary cause = T068 

Example 2 

1a Head Injury and Fracture thoracic spine S099 S220 

 Fall downstairs at home W100 

 Verdict = Accidental 

 u/cause = W100 Secondary cause = T068 

Example 3 

1a Spinal cord transection S141 

1b Atlanto-axial fracture S121 

1c Head injury S099 

 Fell from a ladder at home W110 

 Verdict = Accidental 

 u/cause = W110 Secondary cause = T068 

Example 4 

1a Fracture of skull S029 

1b multiple injuries T07 

Motor cyclist fell from his bike when he lost control negotiating 

bend V284 

 Verdict = Accidental 

 u/cause = V284 Secondary cause = T068 

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Examples of secondary cause of S297 – injuries classifiable to more 

than one of the categories S20-S290 

S297 = Multiple injuries of the thorax 

Example 1 

1a Hemothorax and pneumothorax S271,S270 

1b Fracture of ribs S224 

 Pedestrian hit by car whilst crossing the road V031 

 Verdict = Accidental 

 u/cause = V031 Secondary cause = S297 

Example 2 

1a Laceration of Heart , Lung and Aorta S269,S273,S250 

1b Severe Chest injury S299 

 Pedestrian knocked down by a car V031 

 Verdict = Accidental 

 u/cause = V031 Secondary cause= S297 

Example of an injury in S06- excluding with mention S02- 

Example 1 

1a Cerebral contusion, subarachnoid hemorrhage S062, S066 

1b Fracture of skull S029 

 Driver of car in collision with another car 

 Verdict = Accidental 

 u/cause = V435 Secondary cause = S029 

Example of combining fractures of multiple body regions 

T028 = Fractures involving other combinations of body regions 

Example 1 

1a Fracture skull, spine and ribs S029, T08, S224 

 Pedestrian hit by car V031 

 Verdict = accidental 

 u/cause = V031 Secondary cause = T028 

4-13
Household Injury Survey Comparison 

Melissa Heinen and Kara McGee 

Background 

Household surveys offer population-based injury and poisoning estimates that are not 

subject to the same biases as medical records-based estimates. Development of reliable 

methods for conducting household surveys to measure injuries is a priority in many 

countries in part due to increased interest in international comparisons and in part due to 

the importance of developing national benchmarks. Household and community-based 

injury surveys are particularly useful in low- and middle-income countries where other 

injury surveillance methods are nonexistent or incomplete. 

Problem 

Currently there is no consensus on the questions or the inclusion criteria for these 

surveys. The lack of standardized survey questions and methods make international 

comparisons of non-fatal injuries difficult. The International Collaborative Effort on 

Injury Statistics (Injury ICE) is providing a forum for the development of a standard 

methodology for conducting household and community-based injury surveys. 

WHO 

The World Health Organization Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention (WHOVIP) is conducting a number of activities related to community-based and household 

injury surveys. WHO-VIP provides technical assistance and financial support to members 

states to conduct injury surveys. Currently, WHO-VIP is supporting surveys in Sri 

Lanka, Kenya, and Mozambique. In addition, WHO-VIP participates in other WHO 

initiatives related to household surveys, including: the population-based Behavioral Risk 

Factor Surveillance Project, the STEPwise approach to non-communicable disease 

surveillance, the Global School-based Health Surveillance System Project, and the WHO 

Multi-country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence. 

5-1
WHO-VIP is also developing a document, Guidelines for the community surveys on 

injuries. This document is designed to provide the reader with information on the 

process of designing and implementing a community-based injury survey as well as a 

standardized survey tool for systematic collection of data. A first draft of this document 

is currently being revised and will be sent for external review shortly. 

Survey comparison 

A convenience sample of 10 national household surveys was compared. The countries 

were selected from among the Injury ICE participants. Survey design elements compared 

included sample design, recall period, severity threshold, self/proxy reporting, collection 

method, and questions screening for injuries (table 1). The recall period, severity 

threshold, screen introduction, and screen question were the focus of the comparison. 

Recall periods ranged from 4 weeks to 18 months. The severity threshold for inclusion 

included no severity threshold, first aid, limitation of daily activities, medical advice or

treatment. Some surveys allowed self and proxy reporting while others allowed only 

self-reporting of injuries. Some of the items included in the section introduction include 

the definition of injury, definition of intent, explanation of exclusion criteria, explanation 

of severity threshold, explanation of why the information is collected, and examples of 

injury conditions or events. Each survey had its own unique set of questions to screen for 

injuries. The screen questions varied in their wording, recall period, severity threshold, 

mention of injury examples, and mention of exclusion criteria. 

Group discussion 

Kara McGee, Johan Lund, Saakje Mulder, Alberto Concho-Eastman, Pnina Zadka, Clare 

Griffith, and Melissa Heinen shared their countries/organizations experience related to

household surveys with injury questions and what they would like to see developed 

related to household surveys. The general themes from the discussion were: 

1. Many organizations are developing their own set of injury questions, thus 

resulting in a lot of duplication of effort without much comparability at the 

national or community level. Therefore, there is a need to develop and 

5-2
recommend a standard set of injury survey questions that can be used at the 

national and community level. 

2. Special attention needs to be paid to severity threshold, cultural components, and 

recall period. Rationale for the decisions related to these survey components must 

be well documented. 

3. There is a need to develop question modules related to disability, impairment, 

protective equipment, exposure levels (e.g., number of hours playing sports), risk 

factors, occupational-related injuries, violence-related injuries (i.e., domestic 

violence), and special populations (e.g., youth, elderly, etc.). 

4. Focus of the ICE group work will not be on methods, because WHO has a done a 

lot already in this area and often injury questions are imbedded in surveys with 

previously designed sampling methods. 

Plan development 

Kara McGee, Sue Gallagher, Kathryn Wilkins, Mathilde Sector, Barbara Altman, and 

Melissa Heinen met to develop a plan related to household survey injury questions. A 

measurable objective was defined: Develop internationally comparable household survey 

injury modules to collect population based injury data at the national and community 

level. The first step in the process will be to expand the comparison to include at least 

five more countries and additional variables (location, activity, nature of injury, body 

region, mechanism, intent, definition of injury, coding system). In addition a systematic 

report of rationale and validity related to several survey components (recall period, 

severity threshold, proxy and self report, age of self report, and special populations) will 

be written. Both of these projects will be published upon completion. It is our plan that 

with this review of survey questions and components, a standard basic injury module will 

be developed to assist countries/communities in measuring injury events and allowing for 

international comparisons. 

5-3
FACE TO 

FACE

PHONE MAIL SELF PROXY

AUSTRIA Statistiks Austria Microcensus (Translated) Stratified sample, with 

weighting for annual national estimates

1997

All ages of noninstitutionalized residents

√ √√ 12

Received medica

FRANCE CNAM TS – Caisse 

Nationale de I’assurance Maladie des Travailleurs Salaries

National Health Insurance Agency on Accidents in Daily Living (Translated)

Random sample, retrospective household study

1995

All households with at least one member insured by Social Security System (exclude: non-salary workers or farmers) √√ √ 12

All accidents, inneeding and thosmedical treatmen

GERMANY BAUA – Bundesanstalt 

fur Arbeitsschutz and Arbeitsmedizin

Home and Leisure Accidents, Representative Survey in Germany in 2000 (Translated)

Nationwide representative household inquiries, unclustered sample, with weighting by population structure and socio-demographic factors 2000/ 2001

Resident population

√ √√ 3

Medically treate

at least 14 days

CANADA Statistics Canada Canadian Community 

Health Survey

Stratified multistage probability sample

2003

Household residents age 12 and over in all provinces and territories (excluding: Indian Reserves, Canadian Forces Bases and some remote areas)

√√ √ *** 12

Limitation of no

UNITED STATES National Center for Health

Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

National Health Interview Survey

National probability sample

2004

Civilian noninstitutionalized population residing in the United States with an over sampling of the Black and the Hispanic population. √ √√ 3

Medical advice o

AUSTRALIA Australian Bureau of 

Statistics

National Health Survey Dwellings were selected 

at random using a multistage area sample of private dwellings

2001

Noninstitutional civilian residents

√ √  √** ** 1*

Consulting a heaseeking medical receiving medicareducing usual atreating the injur

NEW ZEALAND Public Health Agency, 

Ministry of Health

Health Behavior Survey (HBS)

National clustered, stratified sample 2004

Civilian noninstitutaionlized population 13-65 years of age √ √ 12

Serious enough tnormal activities

ISRAEL Central Bureau of 

Statistics

Health Survey (translated) Two-stage stratified 

sample of households in localities.

1996/1997

Entire population of Israel, residing in the state of Israel as well as Jews residing in Judea, Samaria, the Gaza Area and Israeli residents who had remained abroad for less than one year. 

√** √ √√

Fatal – 12 months

Medically treate

MOZAMBIQUE National Institute of 

Statistics (INE)

Mozambique Demographic Health Survey Injury 

Questionnaire

Missing

Missing

Missing

Missing √ √

Nonfatal – 1 month

Missing 

AFGHANISTAN National Center for 

Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United States

Afghanistan Mortality, Injury and Disability Survey (AMIDS)

Multi-stage cluster sample

2002

Noninstitutional civilian population residing in Afghanistan

√ √√ 18

No severity thresnonfatal injuries

Table 1. (page 1 of 2) Comparison of injury questions from household surveys

COUNTRY AGENCY SURVEY SAMPLE DESIGN YEAR POPULATION REPORTING RECALL COLLECTION METHOD

PERIOD 

(MONTHS)

* The actual wording in Australia’s screen question is 4 weeks. **Israel’s survey is mainly conducted by phone (~90%). *** For Canada’s survey proxy reporting is allowed only if the selected respondent is unable to complete the interview 

**** Australia’s survey the adults self report and the adult proxy reports for children.

SEVERITY T

5-4
Occupational ICE on Injury 

Nancy Stout 

The Occupational ICE on Injury group is continuing to collaborate on international 

comparisons of fatal occupational injuries, and proposes to launch several new efforts. A 

comparison of fatal work-related injuries in the US, New Zealand, and Australia has 

resulted in three journal articles: 

Feyer A-M, Williamson A, Stout N, Driscoll T, Usher H, Langly J. 

Comparison of work-related fatal injuries in the United States, Australia, and 

New Zealand: Methods and Overall Findings. Injury Prevention 2001; 7:22-

28. 

Williamson A, Feyer A-M, Stout N, Driscoll T, and Usher H [2001]. Use of 

narrative analysis for comparisons of the causes of fatal accidents in three 

countries: New Zealand, Australia and the United States, Injury Prevention 7 

(Supple I):i15-20. 

Driscoll T, Feyer A-M, Stout N, and Williamson A [2002]. Assessing the 

classification of work-relatedness of fatal incidents: a comparison between 

Australia, New Zealand and the United States, Injury Control and Safety 

Promotion 9(1):32-39. 

Continuing this effort, the collaborative group is exploring an international comparison of 

work-related motor vehicle fatalities. Motor-vehicle related deaths had not previously 

been available from all three countries. Differences and similarities between the three

countries in the characteristics of these incidents and the workers involved will shed new 

light on this leading cause of death to workers. 

An effort to expand international comparisons to include more countries is also being 

launched. As a first step, the Occupational ICE group is seeking information from other 

ICE members on the sources, definitions, and characteristics of their national data on 

occupational fatal injuries. The goal of this inquiry is to determine the comparability of 

such data from other nations and thus the ability to include a broader array of countries in 

an analytic comparison of international data that are truly comparable. 

6-1
The following table describes the case selection criteria for inclusion in the broader 

multi-national comparison. 

Case Selection Criteria

Include these groups: Exclude these groups:

Civilian Labor Force, > 15y Civilian Labor Force, ≤15y 

Civilian Labor Force, < 85y Civilian Labor Force, ≥ 85y 

Homicides Military personnel 

Injuries occurring during breaks Domestic/home duties 

Injuries to unpaid family helpers 

in for-profit operations 

Unpaid students 

Injuries to self employed people Trainees to work (unpaid) 

Injuries on public highway 

which do not involve traffic 

Bystanders to work 

Suicides at work 

Deaths occurring < 1 yr. after 

injury 

Deaths occurring > 1 yr. after injury 

Injuries to volunteers 

Deaths due to heart attacks or other 

illnesses/diseases 

Traffic injuries occurring on a 

public road 

 – RECORD SEPARATELY 

Injuries occurring while commuting 

between home and work 

The inquiry, including a list of questions regarding data characteristics and these criteria 

is being conducted through the ICE Listserv. 

6-2
The following ICE members participated in the Occupational ICE group meetings on 13-

14 April: 

Nancy Stout – USA 

Gordon Smith – USA 

John Langly – New Zealand 

Anneke Bloemhoff – The Netherlands 

Emilio Castejon Vilella – Spain (Eurostat) 

Andre L’Hours – WHO Switzerland

Barbara Altman – USA 

Lois Fingerhut – USA 

Anne-Marie Feyer, Australia – was unable to attend but provided significant input 

prior and subsequent to the meeting. 

In addition to discussing and refining the plan to pursue the broader international 

comparison, several ideas for new efforts were proposed. John Langly proposed a 

demonstration project to determine the extent of use of ICD-10 activity codes, 

specifically the “working” codes, in national mortality data. The activity codes were 

developed and incorporated into ICD-10 for the purpose of providing data on the activity 

at the time of death. However, it is hypothesized that these codes are rarely applied to 

national mortality data. Documenting the level of use of these codes in various countries 

would allow us to determine their value in identifying cases of fatal occupational injuries. 

Documentation of low usage may also provide stimulus for efforts to increase their 

application. An inquiry on ICD-10 activity codes will be conducted through the ICE 

Listserv. 

Gordon Smith proposed an international comparison of occupational drowning incidents. 

The Occupational ICE is seeking international partners for this effort. 

The Occupational ICE also proposed organizing a paper session on occupational injuries 

at the 7th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion in Vienna in 

2004. Proposed presentations were discussed and group members agreed to submit 

abstracts for an international occupational injury session. 

6-3
Proposed methodology for building multiple injury profiles (MIP) 

Limor Aharonson-Daniel, Valentina Boyko, Malka Avitzour, Arnona Ziv, Kobi Peleg

Background - The need for summarizing multiple diagnoses into injury profiles

Multiple injuries are associated with increased severity and mortality when compared to single 

injuries and require more complex care and facilities. 

There is lack of a tool that would enable the summary and description of multiple injuries and

support statistical analysis yet maintain the detail of the injury. Any method for summary that

uses one (first or most severe) diagnosis distorts the true injury profile and provides a partial 

picture only. Methods that take into account the contribution of multiple diagnoses to severity 

(such as ISS1

) do not aim to preserve the injury details. A comprehensive description is 

necessary, that will provide a more accurate description of the pattern of injury in the individual 

and in the population. The proposed method for multiple injury diagnoses combinations (or 

profiles) aims to achieve the following objectives: 

Aims and objectives 

 To create a tool that preserves information on the components of a multiple injury. 

 

 

 

To create a method for describing and summarizing injury patterns in populations. 

To standardize this method to enable the conduct of comparative studies in order to 

create an international nomenclature with harmonized terms and definitions. 

To provide a better description of the injury casemix and hospital workload. 

Conceptual framework 

The methodology for building multiple injury profiles (MIP) uses as a basis, units defined by the 

Barell Matrix2. The matrix displays all injury ICD-9-CM3 codes in a two dimensional array 

where the nature of injury is presented in 13 columns, based on the sequence of codes detailed in 

the ICD-9-CM classification and the body region in 36 rows, with standard modifications 

(through grouping and clustering) into 27, 8 and 5 rows. The reduction of the number of rows

results in modified matrices, which are easier to handle, but compromise the level of detail

available in the analysis. The matrix enables standardized choices of injury diagnostic groups by 

injured body region (row), injury nature (column) or a combination of both (cell). 

7-1
For analyzing multiple injuries using MIP, ICD-9-CM codes are allocated into the appropriate

cells, from this point onward, the diagnostic codes are substituted with the corresponding matrix 

cells (this could be done with body regions or injury natures as well, depends on the focus of the 

analysis) so that the fundamental injury descriptor becomes a matrix cell (row, column or a 

combination of row and column). The terminology for ‘multiple’ is then derived from the 

definition of the basic units in the analysis. Multiple injuries were defined as injuries that fell 

into more than one group, where ‘the group’ can be body region row, injury nature column or 

matrix cells. For example two fractures to the thigh will be considered as one injury. 

Important notes: 

 Once diagnoses are allocated to matrix cells, the basic units of reference become 

matrix cells. A person sustaining a multiple injury where all diagnoses fall into the same

cell, is considered to have a single injury. The definition of multiple is therefore 

affected by the units used. 

 The decrease in the number of rows or columns enables practical analysis but naturally,

results in loss of detail – the ultimate matrix for a project becomes the one that finds

the balance between feasibility of data interpretation with a large number of

combinations on one hand and the significance and meaning of the grouped categories

on the other.

ICE group Discussion 

The presentations and discussions at the ICE meeting in April 2003 in Paris focused on the 

flowchart of the process. (figure 1). In general, the process was agreed upon and accepted by 

discussion group members. 

A problem that was raised and discussed was the unmanageable number of combinations once 

detail is sought resulting in a large number of body-region rows used. It was suggested that as a 

possible means for reducing the number of combinations, injuries that are of an Abbreviated 

Injury Scale

4

 (AIS) severity of 1, would not be included in the profile. 

It was agreed that we would go back to our data and examine the distribution of diagnoses with 

an AIS of 1. We will check whether these include injuries that should not be excluded due to 

significant contribution to the injury, hospitalization or treatment of the patient. If it is agreed 

7-2
that these injuries can be excluded from the profile, we will examine the effect of the exclusion 

of these injuries from the profile on the number of combinations and other injury indicators such 

as LOS ISS and so on. With these results in hand, future discussions will determine whether or 

not injuries with AIS=1 should be included. Following the ICE meeting, the flowchart was 

modified as appears in figure2. A preliminary attempt to use this approach on real trauma

registry data was published in Injury Prevention5 (with due acknowledgements to ICE on injury 

members...). Following is a practical guideline for the use of the MIP methodology. Researchers 

are urged to try and use multiple injury profiles in their studies and reports. The experimentation 

of this approach on various data sets is essential in order to make it a universally applicable 

method. Additionally, a collaboration was formed with Dr Margy Warner’s multiple cause of 

death (MCOD) group with an aim to apply this concept to the analysis of MCOD. 

Practical guideline 

Introduction: definition of components

Begin with the Barell matrix. Choose the perspective or detail level that matches your needs: i.e. 

choose the number of regions or natures which represent the level of detail you desire, create 

groups which are not too small, yet clinically meaningful. The groups can be selected by clinical 

interest, frequency, unique characteristics or variance between groups, specific study focus and 

so on. The definition of groups is of utmost significance as it may affect the results. A nonsensitive selection of groups may result in missing important information, particularly in groups 

of small frequency. 

Frequency examination and selection of groups [injuries, not patients]

A. Allocate injury codes into matrix cells 

B. Body Region / Injury nature groups 

B1. Produce body-region/ Injury nature group frequency distributions (matrix 

rows/columns) 

B2. Examine, explore, study severity, hospitalization characteristics and outcome of 

various groups, define clustering/grouping level 

B3. Repeat stages B1-B2 until resolution is sufficiently informative. 

7-3
B4. Select Body Region/ Injury nature groups to serve as the basic units for the 

modified matrix. 

7-4
C. Build Modified Matrix using selected rows and columns 

Examine frequency, explore data. 

Notes: 

 Stages A, B and C produce frequency distributions of injuries, not of patients. 

 It is important to keep reference to the original matrix row and column labels, in order to avoid

confusion between old and new rows/columns 

Tip: comparison between populations often helps in focusing on differences and creating relevant 

groups with specific focal points for each study population. 

Injury profile construction and examination [patient level]

D. Body Region (Rows) injury profile 

D1. Build vectors containing multiple body region rows (body region profile) 

D2. Explore frequency. 

D3. Examine severity, survival or other descriptors of each profile 

D4. If the number of combinations is large in a way that interferes with the ability to 

perceive the complete picture, it is necessary to reduce the number of combinations 

presented. This can be done through combining similar groups (clinically or 

otherwise) and by clustering infrequent profiles (unless they are unique or of 

particular interest) into combination or ‘other’ group. 

D5. Repeat stage D2 and start using MIP for data analysis. 

D6. Create a variable that counts and sums the number of components in each profile. 

This variable enables a simple comparison of populations in regard to the proportion 

of single or multiple injuries in each population before going into the detail of what 

these are. 

E. Injury Nature (Columns) injury profile 

E1. Build vectors containing multiple injury nature columns (injury nature profile) 

E2. Repeat stages D2-D6 above for columns instead of rows 

7-5
F. Matrix (cell) injury profile 

F1. Build vectors containing multiple matrix cells (matrix cell profile) 

F2. Repeat D2-D6 above for cells rather than columns or rows 

7-6
Important notes: 

 Stages D, E and F produce frequency distributions of patients, not of injuries. 

 After clustering infrequent profiles into ‘other’ and building the format to your satisfaction, 

use it on this population. Review before applying to another population as different population 

combinations may be (will be) different! 

Use MIP 

Once defined, profiles can be used in data analysis as another patient characteristic (the patient 

can be described by his injury profile in the same manner he would be described by his age or 

sex). The distribution of this data for the population enables perceiving a broad picture of injury 

characteristics in association with various mechanisms or injury circumstances. The use of injury 

profiles in describing the injured improves the understanding of case-mix and can also be useful

for efficient staffing in multidisciplinary trauma teams and for various comparisons. 

Sidetrack approach: Treatment of “others” 

The category named ‘Other’ (both in the one dimension and in the two dimension analyses) 

was built of many groups of small frequency; therefore, it consists mostly of multiples, a 

mish mash of conditions. Due to the large proportion of multiple injuries in this group, 

“other” has a high proportion of severe injuries in it. After taking care of all the large groups, 

it needs to be taken apart and ‘individualists’ explored, as they can not be treated using 

general terms. 

We would greatly appreciate any comments on the proposed methods, reports on difficulties in 

application, suggestions for improvement or any other insights or advice people may have. For any 

communications, request for support or technical advise, please contact Dr. Limor Aharonson-Daniel 

at limorad@gertner.health.gov.il. 

7-7
References

1. Baker SP, O’neill B, Haddon W, Long WB. The injury severity score: a method for 

describing patients with multiple injuries and evaluating emergency care, J Trauma

1974; 14:187-196. 

2. Barell V, Aharonson-Daniel L, Fingerhut LA, Mackenzie EJ, Ziv A, Boyko V, 

Abargel A, Avitzour M, Heruti RJ. An introduction to the Barell body region by 

nature of injury diagnosis matrix. Inj Prev 2002 8: 91-6. 

3. Practice Management Information Corporation (PMIC), International Classification 

of Diseases, 9th revision, clinical modification 5th edition (ICD-9CM), Los Angeles 

1998. 

4. Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine. Committee on Injury

Scaling. The Abbreviated Injury Scale-1990 Revision (AIS-90). Des Plaines IL. 1990 

5. Aharonson-Daniel L, Boyko V, Ziv A, Avitzour M, Peleg K. A new approach to the 

analysis of multiple injuries using data from a national trauma registry Inj Prev

2003:9:156-162. 

7-8
7-9

Injury code

Injury code

O

ne di

m

e

n

sio

n

al

Satisfactory?

yes

no

yes

Modified Matrix

(36 X 12, 9 x 5 , 5 x 5, ? )

Examine, explore, cell

Frequency distribution

Create multiple injury

profiles (MIP)

p

atie

nts

Examine, explore, profile

Frequency distribution

Define cutting point,

(group small or unimportant

groups into ‘other’ category)

Use MIP

to study compare or describe population

patients

iple

y

file

Methodology

Israel National Center for Trauma and E

mergency Medicine

Research,

Gertner Institute for Epidemiology and Health P

olicy Research, Israel

Body Region

Frequency distribution of

matrix rows

Injury code

patient

Injury Nature

Frequency distribution of

matrix columns

Examine, explore,

Define grouping level

(36, 27, 9, 5, ?)

Examine, explore,

Define grouping level

(12, 5, ?)

Create body

region profiles

Two di

m

e

n

sio

n

al

Email: limorad@gertner.health.gov.il

Deal with ‘other’

Separately

if desired

no Satisfactory?

Examine, explore

Create injury

nature profiles

Examine, explore

yes

Figure 1: ICE meeting flowchart

Injuries, n

ot p

atient

s

Mult

Injur

Pro

ICE ON INJURY PARIS 2003
7-10

yes yes

Use MIP

to study compare or describe population

iple

y

file

Methodology

Israel National Center for Trauma and Emergency Medicine Research,Gertner Institute for Epidemiology and Health Policy Research, Israel

Body Region 

(matrix rows)

•Frequency distribution

•Examine, explore

•Define grouping level

Injury Nature

(matrix columns)

•Frequency distribution

•Examine, explore

•Define grouping level

Should AIS=1 as

an additional injury

be included as a 

component in the 

multiple injury

profile?

Email: limorad@gertner.health.gov.il

Deal with ‘other’

Separately

if desired

no no

Allocate injury codes into

matrix cells

Examine, explore basic matrix

Criteria for grouping:

Clinical reasoning

Frequency

Specific study needs

unique injury

Sufficiently

Informative

Resolution?

Sufficiently

Informative

Resolution?

Figure 2: Post ICE meeting flowchart

Injuries, n

ot patient

s patie

nts

ni uj r ei s

Create body

region profiles

• Build vectors containing

multiple body region rows

• Examine, explore

• Count number of

components

• Reduce number of

combinations presented

Define basic units and build

Modified Matrix

•Frequency distribution

•Examine, explore

Create multiple injury

(matrix cell) profiles

• Build vectors containing

multiple matrix cells

• Examine, explore

• Count number of

components

• Reduce number of

combinations presented

Create injury nature

profiles

• Build vectors containing

multiple nature columns

• Examine, explore

• Count number of

components

• Reduce number of

combinations presented

Mult

Injur

Pro

ICE ON INJURY PARIS 2003

•

•

•

•
Strategic Planning Work Group - Summary of Efforts to Date 

Sue Scavo Gallagher 

Background 

The ICE on Injury Statistics held its first meeting nine years ago in May 1994. 

This ICE was initiated to improve the comparability and quality of injury data across 

countries with a focus on the collection, coding, and grouping of injury data. There are 

approximately 30 core participants from a dozen countries who meet annually and 

participate in working groups and research. ICE is sponsored by the National Center for 

Health Statistics (NCHS) with additional funding from the NIH, National Institute on 

Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) 

ICE has worked well through voluntary participation using an ad hoc arrangement 

and has been successful in moving a number of injury data methodological issues ahead 

for the field of injury prevention and control. At the same time, ICE members have 

benefited from their collaboration with other members. Much of the work of the ICE can 

be found on its website: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/advice.htm 

PROBLEM

Continued funding is an issue, both for the annual meeting and for actual project 

work. The ICE on Injury generally sponsors bi-annual meetings in which non-Federal 

participants are provided travel to the meeting (including airfare, hotel accommodations 

and per diem) and during years coinciding with the World Injury Conference generally 

sponsors meeting space. The meetings can be very expensive primarily because of the 

costs of the international travel. Participation in the meetings and ICE projects is carried 

out using time and sometimes materials donated by ICE participants. 

8-1
During this nine-year period of time, a formal evaluation of ICE efforts and 

accomplishments had not been undertaken, nor a strategic plan developed to guide its 

work. Despite the current level of funding with U.S. support, ICE needs to broaden its 

level and sources of funding, perhaps move towards self -sufficiency, and increase 

accountability to its funders. 

METHODS 

In September 2002, the Injury ICE team at NCHS sent out a survey to all those 

persons who had ever participated in an ICE meeting to gather information on their roles 

in ICE, their ideas on the goals for the ICE, the conduct and composition of future 

meetings, future directions, future products and dissemination. 25 participants (about 

40% response rate) answered a series of open-ended questions. 

In November 2002, six members were asked to serve on a working group to begin 

a strategic planning process for ICE. The members of the work group were Birthe 

Frimodt-Moller (Denmark), Susan Gallagher (U.S.), Yvette Holder (Trinidad), James 

Harrison (Australia), and Susan MacKenzie (Canada). Ruth Brenner (US NIH, NICHD) 

was asked to serve as a liaison to the group. The charge to this working group was to 

consider where ICE should be headed, aided by the results of the survey. The goal was to 

draft a five-year strategic plan for the ICE participants to review and discuss at the April 

2003 meeting in Paris. 

The ICE team from NCHS provided the results of the survey. The working group 

reviewed and synthesized these results, identifying themes and issues that needed to be

addressed in the strategic plan. Seven components were included in the plan: 

infrastructure, research dissemination and outreach, training, evaluation of ICE and 

8-2
individual projects, collaborators, and operations with subheadings of funding, 

participants, meetings and products. For each component, members of the strategic plan 

working group individually brainstormed issues to resolve and recommendations to fit 

within each component of the plan. It was also decided to revise the vision, mission, and 

goal for ICE on Injury Statistics. A draft was then prepared for presentation at the ICE 

meeting in Paris. 

Discussion occurred during three separate sessions at the Paris meeting both to 

address the content as well as determine how to proceed with the plan’s development. 

ISSUES 

Participants expressed concern that a more formalized and structured ICE might 

affect the success of ICE and its future achievements. Not everyone was convinced that a 

strategic plan and more formalized operations were needed since many accomplishments 

and contributions to the field had occurred despite a lack of structure. 

There was much discussion about how expanding ICE participation might affect 

or impede the small group nature of meetings and work groups. At the same time some

ICE participants felt that the ICE should be drawing in new members, training or doing 

outreach to some of the countries with less sophistication in the uses of data. Several 

participants pointed out, however, that expansion of ICE membership and/or activities

adds to the problem of finding additional funding. Different categories of members were 

suggested: (1) institutions with responsibility for injury statistics and injury methods; (2) 

researchers and resource experts in injury data; (3) targets of opportunity when ICE is 

meeting in a particular country; and (4) representatives from developing countries. 

8-3
Although other nations could benefit by expansion, ICE needs to be cautious in over 

committing its resources and compromising its small group work. 

A repeated theme was the importance of maintaining a two way process with 

open lines of communication between a proposed steering committee and all members. 

OUTCOME

The draft of the five-year strategic plan was revised to incorporate the comments 

of all participants. A five year fixed strategic plan was proposed with review occurring in 

the fourth year. (See following paper.) 

Candidates for a transitional steering committee were nominated and a vote taken. 

Four organizational members (NCHS, ECOSA, WHO, EC) and four at large members 

(Australia, Canada, Trinidad, U.S.) were chosen. This two year transitional steering 

committee will be charged with implementation of a strategic planning process and parts 

of the strategic plan itself. The major efforts will be the development of an annual work 

plan and the development and implementation of a business plan for self-sufficiency and 

continued operation. 

Beginning in July, the steering committee will begin its discussions and will be 

chaired by Yvette Holder of Trinidad. 

8-4
Five-Year Strategic Plan for ICE on Injury Statistics Components 

Committee Members: Birthe Frimodt-Moller, Sue Gallagher, James Harrison, Yvette 

Holder, and Susan Mackenzie 

Liaison to Work Group: Ruth Brenner, NICHD 

RATIONALE: ICE has worked well through voluntary participation and been successful 

with an ad hoc arrangement for nearly 10 years. However, to insure sustainability, a more 

formalized structure is needed to enhance self-sufficiency and allow for the receipt, 

administration and accountability of outside funding. 

This new structure is not intended to interfere with the successful small group ICE process. 

A five year fixed strategic plan is proposed with review occurring in the fourth year. 

Components of the plan follow and were derived from the synthesis of 25 responses received 

from a 2002 survey sent out by the NCHS Injury ICE team. This draft also reflects the comments 

of participants in the April 13-14 ICE meeting sessions in Paris, France. It was stressed by all 

present that the ICE should continue to be a two way group process between the steering 

committee and all members. 

I. Infrastructure 

A. Develop an expanded infrastructure to support the work of the ICE 

1. Appoint or elect an executive steering committee of 6-8 persons. The SC will be 

appointed for a two-year term and reviewed in two years. (Completed April 14, 2003 – 

vote taken at meeting. Four organizational members and four at large members elected. 

NCHS- Fingerhut, ECOSA -Mulder, WHO- McGee, EC- Frimodt-Moller, AustraliaHarrison, Canada - MacKenzie, Trinidad- Holder, U.S. - Gallagher 

a. Provide guidance to the ICE leadership 

b. Coordinate the direction of ICE activities 

c. Propose new directions that are in keeping with ICE goals 

d. Set up quarterly meetings via conference call to facilitate implementation of the 

strategic plan 

e. Develop an annual work plan 

f. Develop and implement a business plan for self- sufficiency and continued 

operation. Explore non- profit status. See VI A. 

2. Develop a communications plan to improve dissemination of ICE activities and solicit 

items from ICE members to “beef up” the website. See III Dissemination and outreach. 

3. Appoint subcommittees to work on completing components of the strategic plan 

a. Each subcommittee should include an SC participant 

b. Assess whether ICE should be institutionalized as a permanent network 

1. Examine similar efforts, e.g. Cochrane Injuries Group 

 

9-1
II Research

A. Develop and implement a research agenda related to the ICE mission 

 

1. Prioritize topics in the agenda and become more focused on a realistic number of 

projects (see list of potential collaborative projects) 

2. Select about five areas that will maximize participation and productivity. 

3. Establish working groups to carry out 

4. Assign a leader who will oversee the development of a work plan with measurable 

objectives. 

5. Develop a mechanism to fund meetings of working groups 

6. Investigate possible grants and foundations across the world 

7. Identify feasibility of financing international collaboration for specific projects, e.g. 

through the European Union Public Health Program for Injury Prevention 

8. Compile a list of areas of future research (what we would like to have instead of 

current best practices) 

 

III. Dissemination & Outreach (marketing) 

A. Develop a marketing and training plan that may include: 

 

1. Develop a packet of materials to introduce ICE to potential funders and new members 

2. Identify services and expertise that ICE members can offer to other countries and 

organizations. 

3. Identify a key contact in every country in the world who should receive ICE information 

in a proactive manner. 

4. Expand access to and promote the list serve to key country contacts 

5. Expand website to include a list of best practices (with alternative pros and cons) and a 

list of future research 

6. Develop a regular column in one Injury Journal 

7. Develop a special issue of a journal devoted to ICE work 

8. Publish articles in peer reviewed journals and follow-up with policy recommendations, 

which are widely disseminated 

9. Acknowledge ICE and provide web URL on all publications and during presentations. 

10. Use the website to post presentations and synopses of work in progress 

11. Produce a triennial report on international injury statistics 

12. Include a focus on involving developing countries in ICE, e.g. regional contacts 

13. Provide systematic training in the application of ICE products, i.e. the Barell Matrix, the 

surveillance guidelines, the indicators 

14. Conduct training workshops with registration fees 

15. Piggyback training on to an existing course such as the Hopkins Summer Institute or the 

Karolinska Institute 

16. Develop training courses in data collection, analysis, and reporting of data for 

developing countries and other markets 

17. Develop user friendly guidelines to increase use of ICE products, i.e. mortality matrix, 

Barell matrix, injury indicators 

18. Develop some web-based training tools 

9-2
19. Develop courses in conjunction with world conferences 

IV. Evaluation of ICE with measurable objectives 

A. Each project working group should have an identified leader, a work plan, 

measurable objectives, activities and tasks, and anecdotes relating to the impact of 

their work. This information should be provided to the larger ICE membership. 

B. The steering committee should set measurable objectives for the overall 

 ICE 

C. Develop a set of evaluation measures to put ICE achievements into a time 

perspective, e.g. 

i. By April 2004, the steering committee will have flushed out component 1 

infrastructure e and f

ii. By 2006, 10 countries will publish their injury mortality data using the 

ICE Matrix 

iii. By 2005, the Barell Matrix will be available with ICD 10 codes 

iv. By 2006, international agreement will be reached on core injury indicators

for fatal and non fatal injury 

v. By 2006, produce and disseminate four ICE products 

vi. By 2006, add four developing countries as ICE members 

D. Assess how products have been used to influence policy and/or advocate for 

changes. Include anecdotal evidence. 

 E. Facilitate availability of international injury data 

1. Develop a data base of war and terrorism-associated injury deaths with 

representation of at least two countries from each continent by 2005 

2. Add an objective from the indicators exercise 

3. Advocate for constructive critical evaluation of the present “alpha” 

version of the ICECI and for completing French translation (including 

new modules?). In the future document the use of the ICECI 

internationally 

4. Promote cross national analysis of injury data 

5. By _____develop and submit a manuscript to a peer reviewed journal on 

the contribution of agriculture to occupational injury mortality 

internationally 

V. Collaborators 

A. Expand ICE member countries 

 1. Determine the desired size of ICE 

 2. Identify and recruit potential new members (see VI Operations, B. Participants) 

 B. Identify other agencies whose aims are congruent with ICE and develop strategic alliances, 

i.e. Karolinska Institute, CDC, PAHO, WHO, NCIPC, MRC (South Africa), Australian Injury 

Prevention Network, Inter-American Coalition for the Prevention of Violence, to be established 

European Injury Prevention Network)

9-3
VI. Operations

 A. Funding 

1. Strengthen operations by establishing a link with the WHO office dealing 

with ICD and the Family of International Classification 

2. Identify mechanisms to establish ICE as a discrete and distinct entity that 

may accept funding from several agencies 

3. Develop a plan to fund the continuance of ICE meetings ($80,000 for 

Paris), actual project work ($0 allocated), and the participation of new 

members, especially those from developing countries 

4. Consider other mechanisms to share the financial burden, e.g., different 

countries serve as meeting host by providing venue and food, rotate 

adoption of ICE by various agencies, approach WHO for this 

international effort, identify institutions to parent ICE projects 

5. Consider asking members who are able to do so to pay their own travel 

expenses. 

6. Develop criteria for paying for member travel to meetings 

 B. Participants 

1. Continue to have smaller working subgroups to facilitate involvement of 

participants and cross country collaboration 

2. Specifically define the role of ICE participants for new members 

3. Define how one becomes a member of ICE 

4. Develop a formal designation process for organizations and individuals 

to be members of ICE 

5. Perhaps designate different classes of participants in ICE: institutions 

with responsibility in this area, researchers and resource experts in this 

area, targets of opportunity and beneficial exposure when ICE meeting is 

in a particular country, and developing country representatives 

 C. Meetings 

1. Continue to use annual meetings as a time for working groups to meet 

and obtain feedback from the larger forum of participants 

2. Hold more than one annual face-to-face meeting for working groups 

3. Hold Symposia every three years, inviting a broader group. 

4. Hold ICE meetings in conjunction with other international conferences, 

piggybacking as we have done. 

 D. Products 

1. Identify barriers and facilitators to more widespread use of ICE products 

2. Identify new products that others can use to guide collection, 

presentation, interpretation and comparison of injury data 

3. Identify additional products that ICE should produce 

9-4
VISION 

There will be injury statistics, which are internationally comparable and useful for injury 

prevention and control. 

MISSION 

The mission of the Injury ICE is to improve international comparability and quality of injury 

data. The ultimate aim is to provide the data needed to better assess the causes and consequences 

of injury, differences in injury occurrence over time and place, and the most effective means of 

prevention and control. 

GOAL

To provide a forum for international exchange and collaboration among injury researchers who 

develop and promote international standards in injury data collection and analysis. A secondary 

goal is to produce products of the highest quality to facilitate the comparability and improved 

quality of injury data. 

OBJECTIVE LONG TERM – Improve comparability and quality of international 

injury data 

 OBJECTIVES SHORT TERM – TBD See list of potential collaborative projects 

 ACTIVITIES – TBD 

 TASKS – TBD

9-5
POTENTIAL COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS BY THEME 

There needs to be an assigned leader for each project, a plan, and an objective 

This list should be pared down to about 5 items with a leader, plan, and measurable objective. 

We need to define what an ICE project is, further discuss the definition of “injury”, and provide 

anecdotes of the impact of all project work.

Developing injury indicators (research agenda): 

injury indicators 

occupational injury/agriculture

Disability 

Standardization info poisonings 

Complications? 

Injury severity measurement 

long term consequences injury 

Casualties of war 

Methodology issues (research agenda): 

Household surveys 

Barell matrix and multiple injury (?)

Methodology standards research analysis 

Co-morbidity 

Repeated hospitalization

Trend analysis – here or with indicators?

Improving timeliness of injury surveillance systems

Mortality and hospitalization coding issues: 

Multiple causes of death/selecting main injury 

Definition death (with co-morbidity) 

Analysis of multiple cause-of-death data 

Update Barell matrix to ICD-10 

Advocacy for policy making: 

Improving existing data and increasing its programmatic application in all countries 

Advocacy for resources and leadership for implementation of #19 

External cause and injury coding updates ICD-10 

Evaluation of strengths and weaknesses of existing national and international statistical databases 

for policy-making, public health/health care planning and research. 

9-6
Incorporating Disability Measures Into Injury Measurement

Barbara M. Altman 

Nonfatal injuries have the potential for contributing to long-term consequences 

that can become costly for the individual, their families and their communities. While 

many injuries are superficial, requiring a few stitches, bed rest or other relatively simple 

ameliorative services, other forms of accidental injury from automobile crashes, 

intentional injuries that result from weapon use and injuries resulting from terrorist 

activities can have much more serious repercussions for the individual and society. In 

these circumstances, victims are frequently left with residual impairments that are 

associated with functional limitations that can translate into restrictions on limitations in

life activities that were not experienced prior to the injury. These limitations or 

restrictions in tasks or other social role activities are conceptualized as disability. 

Understanding the disability outcomes of injury would provide a more comprehensive 

picture of injury and its sequelae and give a clearer picture of the economic and social 

costs. 

Disability measurement in relation to injury measurement has been raised 

frequently as reflected in the minutes of the 2001 ICE meeting, issues raised at the 

European Injury Prevention Meeting and extensively in the literature. The purpose of this 

presentation is to examine the conceptualization of disability in order to understand the 

possibilities as well as the problems associated with measurement for these purposes. In 

addition I will review briefly some international work on measurement of disability 

already in progress in the Washington City Group. This work may be a useful jumping 

off place for ICE’s consideration. 

There are two models of disability commonly in use today. The Institute of 

Medicine (IOM) model is based on work originally done by Saad Nagi (see figure 1 in 

appendix). This model was developed as part of the evaluation of rehabilitation science 

and engineering in the 90’s. This is the second of two models IOM developed. The first 

examined factors associated with the risk of becoming disabled while the second 

examined the best way to translate scientific findings into clinical and social benefits. The 

emphasis of this model highlighted the interaction of the persons with a physical or 

mental limitation with their physical and social environment, thus identifying disability as 

the behavior that results from this interaction. Measurement of the components of the 

model is left to the user.

The second and more elaborate model is that provided in association with the 

International Classification of Functioning (ICF). The origin of this model was 

associated with the development of a classification system for disability similar to that 

used for classification of disease – ICD (see figure 2 in appendix). Initially developed by 

Phillip Woods in the late 70’s, the World Health Organization sponsored an update that 

took about 8 eight years and has now received international approval. The model is 

accompanied by a classification system that provides domains and categories with which 

to identify different components of disability, however the measurement tool and 

10-1
standards for guidance as to how to classify individual domains/categories are not yet 

developed. 

The models are similar in several areas. Both include elements that identify a 

state of impairment or an indication of limitation in function of parts of body structure. 

Both also include reference to participation or the lack of participation in what could be 

called social roles. Both also include the importance of environment as a contributing 

element. IOM identifies two components of environment, physical and social as 

encompassing context, while ICF identifies environment as a whole, both physical or 

material and societal as interveners at all the conceptual domains. ICF also includes 

personal factors as interveners at all the conceptual domains while those personal factors 

are presented as precursors in the IOM model. 

The models have differences as well, including the use of the term “disability”. In 

the ICF, “disability” is interpreted as the negative aspect of all the domains. In the IOM 

model, disability is not given a positive or negative valence, but is interpreted as the 

outcome of the interaction of person and environment. In addition, the ICF offers a 

classification scheme, albeit without a specified accepted norm or standard of functioning 

or an operationalized measurement tool that can connect the concept with the chosen

classification categories.

Using information from the models, we see that disability can be identified either 

at the individual level based on several aspects of functioning alone or at the participation 

level which implies the person/environment interaction. At the individual level there are a 

variety of conceptual approaches including impairments, functional limitations, activities 

or purposive actions, participation or involvement in social life that can be measured. 

Addition of an environmental perspective, the individual’s physical or social contexts

would give a more complete picture of the situation, but would likely make the data 

collection process lengthier and more complicated. 

There are any number of indicators available that can provide this information at 

the individual level from as broad an operationalization as the presence of physical 

trauma or disease, which assumes the level of risk for disability is worth considering to 

indicators of difficulties with sensory functions or physical movements like mobility. So, 

for example, identification of spinal cord injury would carry the assumption of disabling 

consequences greater than that of a broken toe. At the same time an indication of inability 

to see a person across a room is a more specific indication of some functional limitation. 

As the specificity of measures becomes more focused, the identification of disability 

associated with injury would become narrower. Measures cannot be used haphazardly, 

however, but must be considered carefully in order to address the purposes of the data 

collection and the reasons that information on disability is being included. Also the nature 

of the definition of disability that is needed to capture the population of interest is an 

important consideration. The tensions between detail of data and respondent burden or 

ability to answer are yet another factor to be considered when developing a disability 

measure to accompany injury identification. 

10-2
To translate from the conceptual models to measurement of disability associated 

with injury needs careful consideration. The Washington City Group Measurement 

Matrix indicates that data collectors must consider three components of measurement 

before appropriate questions can be selected (see table 1 for more details on Matrix). 

Those three components include purpose of measurement (what is the nature of the 

research question), domain or concept to be measured (what aspect/s of disability will 

address the research question) and characteristics of questions and answer categories that 

provide the information. Questions researchers must ask are: what kind of information 

on disability is needed to understand the outcomes; which element of conceptualization 

of disability is most important for the kind of information that is being sought; and what 

format of question will provide the necessary information and level of detail?

Possible purposes of measuring disability associated with injury include provision 

of services for rehabilitation, long term effects for individuals and their families, 

incidence or prevalence estimates, trend analysis, development of prevention policies and 

others. Understanding the purposes of measurement also helps us understand if we need 

longitudinal type data collection in order to ascertain outcomes over a period of time, or 

if a point in time indicator will suffice. “Disability” or some element of that phenomenon 

is probably useful information for understanding both prevention and outcomes of 

intentional and unintentional injury. However, they present very different data collection 

problems. There is NOT a one-size fit all measure of “disability” to accomplish all 

needs, but that does not mean it is not a worthwhile endeavor to begin building a 

measurement repertoire for use in injury research. 

10-3
APPENDIX 

Current IOM Model

Figure 1

Source: Brandt & Pope, 1997

10-4

WHO Model - ICF

Health Condition

(disorder or disease)

Body Functions &

Structure

Activity Participation

Environmental

Factors

Personal 

Factors

Figure 2

Source: ICIDH-2, 1999
Washington City Group Disability Measurement Matrix

Abbreviated Draft 

Part A Part B Part Purpose of Measurement

Model Components Question Cha

Impairment Functional 

Limitation

Activity Participation Duration # Ans

Categ

Part I: Individual Data Focus of data collection is on the individuals who will be served by the program or p

itself

A. Equalization of OpportunityB. RehabilitationC. Needs AssessmentD. PreventionE. ResearchPart II: Population/Aggregate Data

Focus of data collection is policy planning and program development for the total po

served by policy development or implementation 

A. Equalization of OpportunityB. Needs Assessment

10-5
Part A Part B Part 

Purpose of Measurement

Model Components Question Cha

Impairment Functional 

Limitation

Activity Participation Duration # Ans

Categ

C. PreventionD. Research/ Trend AnalysisE. Public Information 

10-6
Results of the ICD-10 bridg

study in England and W

Cleo Rooney, Clare Griffiths and L

Health and Care Division, O
Bridge-coding metho

• independent coding to ICD-9 and ICD-1•

original text and amendments

•

routine coding procedures/ rules

–

US Software, clerical for inquests

•

all deaths registered in 1999 

•

comparability ratios

–

e

g IHD deaths in ICD-10/ IHD deaths 

– age and sex specific, standardised
ASMR from falls -

males, England 

1979-2001 as published and a

02468

10

1979

1981

1983

1985

1987

1989

1991

1993

1995

1997

1999

20

y

ear o

f deat

h

death rate per 1,000,000
Fracture cause unspecified in ICD-9 

accident in ICD-10 accounts for most 

ICD-10

ICD-9

Falls

W00-W19

osteopro

sis

/patholo

gic

al fracture

M80-M81

unspecif

accid

X

Falls E880-E888 inclusive 2175 22 16

Falls (E880-E

8

8

6, E888 2173

7

Fracture, cause

unspecified E887

2

1

5

16
Comparability ratios for deaths 

accidental falls in ICD-10 (W00-W1

number of deaths in ICD-10

ICD9 code Ratio

confidence 

male E880-E888 0.72 0.69 -0.fem

ale E880-E888 0.46 0.44 -0.4

male E880-E886,

E888

1.02 1.00 -1.

fem

ale E880-E886,

E888

1.00 0.98 -1.
Comparability ratios for ac

falls in selected count

•

Scotland 1.00

•

Sweden 0.35

• U

S

A

0.8

5

•

Scotland - large gains from pneumonia 

losses from E887 and to osteoporosis

•

Sweden -

very large proportion were E8

to Osteoporosis
Other comparability rat

England and Wales 

•

Suicide / Self harm 1.00

•

Undetermined intent c 1.0

•

MVTA -

?

?

– Land Transport Accidents
Other issues

• Too much detail demanded

– falls > MRG to split X59–

‘car crashes’ in Mexico > 40% fall in 

• suicides in some countries• poisoning

– better information from injury codes, 

in external 

– ?need to identify specific combinatio
ONS Continuing Comparability 

•

Cancers by site, land transport accidents 

•

Main injury 

•

Bridge code sample of 1996

•

Data are available via National Statistics 

– ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes, age, sex, region

•

Bridge-code updates to ICD-10?

–

Which version o

f Rule 3?

–

Every 5 years?
Further information on b

coding study and full res

• ICD-10 Webpages on National Statistics w

–

www.statistics.gov.uk > health and care

•

Queries on ICD-10 & deaths data > e-mail

– ICD10.mortality@ons.gov.uk

•

Queries on other ICD issues > e-mail

–

who@ons.gov.uk

•

More details in Health Statistics Quarterly 8

– www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_health/HSQ8Book–

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_health/HSQ1
Pneumonia mortality rates 

E&W, 1999: by age, ICD-9

and comparability ra

0

100020003000400050006000

25-29

30-34

35-39

40-44

45-49

50-54

55-59

60-64

65-69

70-74

75-79

8084

rate per 100,000

IC

D

9 r

a

t

e IC

D

1

0 r

a

t

e Ra
EU Public Health Programme: 2003 to 2008 

Mathilde Sector 

Public health action programme: A key instrument underpinning the development of the 

Community’s health strategy and to involve applicant countries in the implementation. 

Prior to this programme, injury was one stream alongside health promotion, information and 

education, cancer, AIDS, drug dependence, rare diseases, health monitoring, and pollution-related 

diseases. With the new Health Programme 2003, all of these vertical programmes should be 

integrated in a horizontal action programme. 

Priority areas in 2003: 

 Strand I:Health Information 

 Strand II: Health Threats 

 Strand III: Health Determinants 

The objectives of this new programme are to focus on the following issues: improve the health 

information and knowledge in Europe; develop and operate a health monitoring system (incl. 

Health Indicators); disseminate, transfer, share information at the EU level (surveillance and 

response system); improve E-Health-online; identify methods for reacting health emergencies; 

and analyse and report on health issues relevant at the EU level and provide recommendations 

based on health technology analysis, health impact analysis, and best practice. 

Injury has been identified as a key policy area, and therefore money has been provided for a 

Working Party on Injuries, including self-inflicted injuries and violence. Injury proposals will be 

sent in for Strand I and Strand II but not for Strand III. 

Calendar for project proposals in 2003: 

 March: Call for proposals 

 May: Deadline for proposals 

 September: List of accepted proposals 

The projects will be 80% funded for a duration of 24 months, with involvement of candidate 

countries especially important. The total funding amount for projects is still unknown, varying 

from 1 million to 6 million EUR. 

Reminder: 

7th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion 

June 6 – 9, 2004 in Vienna, Austria, Europe 

12-1
International Classification of External Causes of Injuries (ICECI): an update 

Saakje Mulder 

ICECI: the classification

Design of ICECI. ICECI is 

- multi-axial,

- hierarchical,

- modular, 

- a pick and choose classification, and a 

- reference classification.

Structure of ICECI 

ACTIVITY

Level 1

Level 2

OBJECT

Level 1

Level 2

ALCOHOL

USE

Level1

DRUG

USE

Level 1

PLACE

Level 1

Level 2

MECHANISM

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Short version

INTENT

Level 1

Level 2

Violence Transport Place Sport Occupational

Data elements

for all injuries

Modules for

specific injuries

The relation between ICECI and ICD-10: 

- Complementary: ICECI is not replacing parts of ICD 

- Comparable (to extent possible) by means of the ICE injury matrix 

The current state of affairs 

WHO stated in April 2001: 

ICECI is a WHO related classification in development and is subject to formal WHO procedures 

(which have not yet been decided upon) for acceptance as related classification within FIC 

(Family of International Classifications). 

In October 2002 it was decided that ICECI has reached the alpha-version within the FIC, 

although it is not yet clear how alpha-status is being defined. 

13-1
A taxonomic review of ICECI has been carried out by the Australian Institute of Health and 

Welfare, National Injury Surveillance Unit, Flinders University, and the National Centre for 

Classification in Health, University of Sydney. A project proposal was written in May 2002: the 

project was finished in October 2002. The Core data set of ICECI and its Transport module were 

reviewed. No revision of contents or scope was intended. 

The objectives of the taxonomic review were: 

- to provide a basis for indexing 

- to be (part of) recognition at WHO-FIC-meeting in October 2002 

The activities within the taxonomic review were: 

- a review according to taxonomic principles, 

- to find areas for improvement, 

- to come up with proposals for solving problems 

- to implement the improvements 

The inclusion of the results from the taxonomic review plus comments from users has been 

included in the latest ICECI version 1.1a. 

The French translation of ICECI was reviewed by Bertrand Thelot (France) and colleagues from

several countries where French is spoken. 

It is foreseen that during the summer of 2003 James Harrison will come up with a new and 

sophisticated method to index a classification, in particular ICECI. 

The use of ICECI 

Several derivatives of ICECI were developed: 

- CDC’s short version (United States) 

- Less resourced countries (WHO) 

- ISS Coding manual in Europe (European Union) (Emergency Department based) 

- Burn injuries (in development by the International Society of Burn Injuries and the 

European Burn Association: check the current version, decide upon a module and/or a 

minimum data set) 

- Spinal cord injuries (ICECI is a preferred candidate for an international effort) 

- Minimum Data Sets in Europe (European Union) 

The Minimum Data Sets on Injuries (MDS-Is) in Europe have been developed in the past two 

years, resulting in five MDS-IS, which are 

- subject to aim and target group (see Scheme) 

- compatible with most relevant international classifications (of which ICECI is the most 

important) 

The MDS-Is are meant to be used for: 

- Reporting format 

- Improving existing surveillance systems 

- New injury surveillance systems 

13-2
Objectives Settings 

Fatalities Other health

care 

Hospital 

admission 

Emergency 

Department 

attendances

1 Monitor the total number of

injured persons 

in the specified setting 

MDS-Is-1 

2 Monitor the total number of

injured persons by intention 

MDS-Is-2 

3 Monitor the total number of

injured persons by major accident 

type, major type of violence and 

major type of intentional selfharm

MDS-Is-3 

4 Monitor the total number of

injured persons by specific 

categories 

MDS-Is-4 MSD-Is-5

Some examples of how ICECI is being used (despite the fact that ICECI was not yet actively 

being promoted and after a passive search for use): 

- Sports module National Health Interview Survey data (United States) 

- Violence data (a pilot in 3 EU-countries, co-ordinated by Denmark) 

- Renewal of the Electronic Medical Record (Indonesia) 

- Changing the datasets in 3 Emergency Departments in Oxfordshire (United Kingdom) 

- Research project (Perth, Australia) 

- Personal accidents to be collected in 2003 (Insurance company, Italy) 

- Injuries and alcohol and drug abuse (university in Germany) 

- International course on surveillance (Sweden) 

- Included in a pilot at 10 Emergency Departments in British Columbia (Canada) 

- Record information from Coroners (Canada, in development + Australia) 

- Study of injuries in the military (Canada) 

 

13-3
ECOSA Working Group on quantifying post-injury levels of functioning and disability 

Saakje Mulder 

Disabilities (i.e. reduced levels of functioning resulting from diseases or injuries) are increasingly

recognised as an important component of a population’s health. However, within the injury field, 

empirical, comparable and representative epidemiological data on the incidence, severity and 

duration of disabilities are scarce and incomplete. Most functional outcome studies in this area 

have so far focused on adult patients with major trauma. Some studies have been conducted on 

the functional outcome of the more severe childhood injuries. 

For the majority of injury patients, however, hardly any empirical disability data are available. In 

addition, the available knowledge is difficult to interpret. It seems as if in European countries 

hardly any knowledge on this important issue is available at the moment. More theoretical and 

empirical work on injury-related disability has to be done in order to fill the data gaps described 

above. This work is a prerequisite for the meaningful execution of burden of injury studies and 

studies into the cost-effectiveness of injury control measures. 

For this purpose, European Consumer Safety Association (ECOSA) has established a European 

Working Group on Post-injury Levels of Functioning and Disability. The group has started with 

participants from the Netherlands, the UK and Denmark. Within the next few years the group 

should extend into a network of researchers and clinicians involved in quantifying post-injury 

levels of functioning and disability from as many European countries as possible. 

The aim of the working group to develop a ‘common’ conceptual framework within the injury 

research community for calculations on the ‘disability’ component of the burden of injury at the 

population level and for evaluations of the (cost-)effectiveness of injury prevention and trauma

care, using composite health outcome measures with a disability component (e.g. QALYs and 

DALYs). 

The objectives of the Working Group are: 

- to summarise the theoretical background of quantifying post-injury levels of functioning and 

disability; 

- to develop guidelines for future empirical work in this area ('what should be measured for 

what purposes, how should this be measured, and when should this be measured?'); 

- to evaluate the available literature (i.e. empirical studies) on post-injury levels of functioning 

and disability in European countries ('which empirical information is already available within 

Europe and how can this be applied?'); and 

- to formulate recommendations for future theoretical and empirical work ('how should the 

European injury research community proceed with this subject?'). 

The Working Group has published a draft report on Quantifying post-injury levels of functioning 

and disability: why and how? This report includes an overview of the theoretical background of 

the issue, including an example of empirical data, and the demarcation of the subject. 

The Working Group will develop practical guidelines for empirical follow-up studies into postinjury levels of functioning for selected types of injury. These guidelines will contain advice on 

measurement instruments and moments, methods of data acquisition, additional background 

14-1
variables to be collected and their (internationally) accepted methods, the numbers of patients to 

be included, and types of analyses to be performed and possible methods to use. 

Secondly, the Working Group will take the initiative for a ‘European disability follow-up study’ 

testing the guidelines for selected types of injury: open wounds, poisoning, ankle/foot sprain, 

wrist fracture, hip fracture, brain injury, spinal cord injury, and multitrauma. The financing for 

this work will hopefully be acquired through both European and country-specific applications. 

The Working Group would like to have input from experts: 

- Are you interested in participating in the ECOSA Working Group?

- Are you involved in research related to the topic of post injury levels of functional outcome 

and disability, or are you aware of any studies that are not yet included in the draft report?

- Are you aware of other European researchers working in the field?

- Do you have any comments or suggestions on the draft report or the work of the Working 

Group?

If your answer to one of those questions is ‘yes’, please get in touch with the Working Group. 

The current members of the Working Group are: 

Ed van Beeck, Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands 

Claus Falck Larsen, University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark 

Ronan Lyons, University of Wales, United Kingdom

Willem Jan Meerding, Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam, the Netherlands 

Saakje Mulder. Consumer Safety Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (chair) 

For more information: website: www.ecosa.org or Saakje Mulder (s.mulder@consafe.nl) 

14-2 
Developing a set of indicators for injuries/accidents for the European Union: a 

practical approach 

Saakje Mulder 

Within the European Commission (Directorate General Sanco, Public Health) several 

projects include the development of ‘indicators’. Examples are health indicators in 

general, road accident indicators, indicators on children’s accidents. 

At the moment a strategy is to be defined for developing indicators on injuries/accidents. 

Representatives of the IPP (Injury Prevention Programme) Network (Birthe FrimodtMoller, Ronan Lyons, Saakje Mulder) have prepared a practical approach/strategy on 

behalf of the Network on developing a set of indicators for injuries/accidents for the 

European Union. 

The IPP Network has thus far been engaged in work on improving the injury data 

collection system and its use, i.e. the Injury Surveillance System (ISS) at EU level. This 

along with other data sources is one of the prerequisites for the future work on injury 

indicators, which is a priority area for the continued activities under the new Public 

Health Programme. Some results of the Network’s activities during the IPP are reflected 

in the following. 

Definition indicator 

An indicator for injuries/accidents is: A unit of quantitative information which reflects, 

directly or indirectly, the performance of health and welfare interventions (including 

injury prevention), or of health care facilities on the problem of injuries. (based on 

definition from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Family Services, 1997). 

Aim of a set of indicators 

We want (1) to provide an overview of the state of affairs concerning accidents/injuries in 

a certain country or region, and (2) to use this information for comparing countries (e.g. 

Why does country A perform better on prevention of drownings than country B?). 

This means that we need indicators for accident data, but also indicators for possible 

explanations for differences between countries or regions (like differences in exposure, 

country profiles, incl. health care systems, etc.). 

Scope 

We include intentional and unintentional injuries. 

Potential use/objectives

The set of indicators might be used for: 

- Measuring the magnitude of injuries/accidents, their determinants and the trends 

therein throughout the EU, leading to priority setting for prevention policies; 

15-1 
- Benchmarking throughout Europe (what is best practice), leading to indication of 

(inter)national or regional priorities for target groups and interventions; 

- Providing a guiding structure for the production of (inter)national public health 

reports; 

- Providing a logical framework for electronic data exchange system; 

- Identifying gaps in information leading to indication of priorities for data collection 

and harmonisation. 

Types of indicators 

The field of accidents/injuries is very broad and complex. Therefore several types of 

indicators need to be selected in order to give a clear picture of the problem, its potential 

causes and explanations for differences noted between countries. 

We have initially selected six categories: 

- Country profile

These should indicate the overall state of affairs of a country, e.g. the money that is 

spent on health influences, the magnitude/severity of injuries, the number of 

inhabitants influences the size of potential risk groups (especially age groups are 

particular injury risk groups, like children and the elderly). 

- Health system

These should indicate the way the health system works in a country. E.g. if everybody 

first has to visit a General Practitioner before being referred an Emergency 

Department (ED), this influences the population attending the ED. 

- Cause specific mortality and morbidity (accidents/injuries)

These should indicate the state of affairs concerning safety in a country. E.g. the 

percentage of fatalities due to accidents out of all fatalities. 

- Exposure 

These should indicate the ‘population’ at risk concerning injuries in a country. E.g. 

differences in the popularity of sports will influence the injury pattern. 

- Determinants 

These should indicate the factors that might influence the occurrence of 

accidents/injuries. E.g. socio-economic status, ethnicity, cultural behaviour. 

- Interventions

These should indicate the effort that has already been made on injury prevention and 

control. E.g. national injury prevention plans, the number of laws relevant to safety (of

course enforcement also plays an important role).

User windows

Because the set of indicators will be used by different users and for different purposes, 

subsets will be defined. These subsets are named ‘user-windows’ (see project European 

Committee on Health Indicators, ECHI phase 1). As an example, user windows might be 

based on the Minimum Data Set on Injuries (MDS-Is), which were developed as a project 

of the Injury Prevention Programme. The level of information is based on two 

dimensions. Firstly, the four levels of priority setting defined for the MDS-Is: (1) monitor 

the total number of injured persons, (2) monitor the total number of injured persons by 

15-2 
intention, (3) monitor the total number of injured persons by major accident type, major 

type of violence and major type of intentional self harm, and (4) monitor the total number 

of injured persons by specific categories. The second dimension is health care setting: (1) 

fatalities, (2) hospital admission, (3) Emergency Department attendances and (4) other 

health care attendances. 

This means that such user windows for accidents would be based on two dimensions: 

- level of priority setting 

- health care setting 

The level of priority setting leads to hierarchical indicators (a tree structure). 

- Level 1: Accident/injuries 

- Level 2: Unintentional versus Intentional injuries

- Level 3a: Home and leisure, Occupational, Sports, Road/traffic 

- Level 3b: Intentional self-harm, Assault, Other violence 

- Level 4a: Falls, drownings, poisonings etcetera. 

- Level 4b: Sexual assault, gang-related incident 

These levels can be distinguished per health care setting. Health care setting is not always 

regarded as a separate dimension. However, these settings are for accidents/injuries very 

important, especially since monitoring is based on these settings. 

Ultimate results 

As far as possible, indicators already developed will be considered, esp. if they were 

evaluated and harmonised at the European level. For each type of indicator we will select 

the most relevant ones (from a long list to a short list). The final selection of indicators 

will be based on features of the data such as relevance, validity, reliability, timeliness,

availability, stability, continuity, sensitivity (to changes over time or by place), 

comparability (between countries and regions), power of discernment per country. 

The ultimate set of indicators for accidents/injuries will include information per indicator 

on: 

- the (original) source; 

- the update frequency (information on each indicator needs to be, or at least become, 

routinely available); 

- availability: annual data should be available; 

- the exact definition; 

- whether the information is listed in ECHI phase 1; 

- guidelines for determining the user windows. 

Current approach 

We will draft a long list of potential indicators. Since the field of accidents/injuries 

stretches from fall to poisonings, it is not possible to define indicators which will cover 

the whole spectrum. Therefore it was decided to have a different approach for each type 

of indicator (see results). 

15-3 
The way ahead 

It is shown that determining indicators for injuries/accidents is complicated, because of

the broadness and multidisciplinary nature of the field. Future work on the development 

of injury indicators is part of the current preparation for the Call for proposals related to 

the Work Plan 2003 for the EU Public Health Programme. The plans include further 

studies of work achieved during the last few years in various programmes at the EU level, 

e.g. the ECHI project, projects under the Health Monitoring Programme, such as the 

CHILD project (Child Health Indicators of Life and Development), and work of core 

groups under the EUROSTAT Partnership Health, etc. The injury network seeks to build 

on the results, which are relevant to the injury sphere and also demonstrating evidence of 

data harmonisation for sources of information at the European level. Development of 

injury indicators is envisaged as an integrated part of the future Working Parties planned 

under Strand 1 of the Public Health Programme (cf. Work Plan 2003). 

It is suggested to first determine the indicators that give an indication of the overall state 

of affairs concerning safety in a country. This implies that for some of the more 

complicated indicators a selection should be made of measures that give an indication 

(e.g. select five important laws and check how many are introduced in a country). The 

second step could be to provide guidelines for drafting a set of indicators for specific 

issues, like a specific set of indicators for drownings. Some of the indicators will be 

similar to the overall set of indicators (like the ones for country profile), but some will be 

completely different (like for exposure data). 

In the next months, the final design will be decided upon. 

15-4 
16-1

Update on injury registration in the Nordic countries 

Johan Lund 

Background

The Nordic countries have a population of about 25 million, divided in the countries of 

(population in million in parenthesis): Denmark (5.2), Finland (5.0), Iceland (0.3), Norway 

(4.5), and Sweden (9.0). During the years a broad collaboration between the countries has 

been undertaken on many issues including injury registration and classification. Inspired by 

the developments in the 1970s of the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) 

in the USA and the Home Accident Surveillance System (HASS) in the UK, the Nordic 

countries ran pilot projects on injury surveillance systems for home and leisure accidents 

mainly for product safety authorities (Nordic Council of Ministers, 1978). These projects 

triggered a need for classification on all injuries that are treated in the health care system. The 

Nordic Classification on External Causes of Injuries (NCECI) is one of the results of this 

work, financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers (NOMESCO, 1984, 1990, 1997). The 

development of NCECI has contributed to the design and development of the International 

Classification of External Causes of Injuries (ICECI), which was launched last year (WHO, 

2002). 

Another example of the Nordic collaboration was a seminar held in June 2001 in Oslo on 

“Injury registration for monitoring and prevention – Experiences and challenges”. The 

seminar consisted of four sessions: 

1) Why injury registration? 

2) Health based registration for monitoring and prevention 

3) Health based registration for prevention – in depth studies. 

4) How to build an efficient health-based injury registration system in large urban 

communities for monitoring and prevention? 

The aim of this presentation is to give an overview of the situation of injury classification and 

registration in the health care system in the Nordic countries. The presentation is mainly based 

on the report from the seminar (Lund et al., 2002) but also on other available information. 

Iceland is not covered in this overview as the country has more or less 100% coverage of 

injury registration by use of the ICD-10 and NCECI classifications. 

Injury classifications in the daily routine in the health care system 

There are two types of injury registration in the medical health care system: 1) normal 

registration in the daily routine by receptionists and physicians without extra registration 

resources, 2) specially designed injury registration system with more comprehensive 

classifications normally requiring extra registration resources. 

In the daily routines in the medical health care system for fatalities and in-patients in the 

Nordic countries, the 10th version of International Statistical Classification of Diseases and 

Related Health Problems is used (ICD-10 – WHO, 1992). Chapter 20: External cause of 
16-2

injuries is in Finland and in Norway modified into abbreviated versions (see Appendix – 

section B2 for an overview of the Norwegian version). In Finland four digit levels are used for 

transport accidents (V01-V99) and for violence (X85-Y09), other external causes are coded 

using the first three digits. An additional variable (with 8 values) is used to classify type of 

accident: traffic, home, sport, other leisure activity, hospital, occupational, school or 

kindergarten, other type of accident. In Denmark, a short version of NCECI is used for all 

injured in-patients instead of ICD-10, Chapter 20. 

Minimum Data Sets (MDSs) have emerged in Norway at some general practitioners 

(Grimsmo and Johnsen, 1999; Lund, 2002) based on ICPC (International Classification for 

Primary Care – Lamberts and Wood, 1987), and in a two-step surveillance system tested in 

Oslo (Lund et al., 2003). In the Appendix, some data elements and codes in the MDS tested in 

Oslo are given. 

Completeness of coding of ICD-10 and NCECI in the daily routines 

The coding system of the complete chapter 20 in ICD-10 is rather comprehensive and 

detailed. The three first digits characterise the accident mechanism and intent of the injury. 

The fourth digit characterises place of occurrence except for the transport accidents (V00-

V99), where it characterises traffic roles of the injured person. The fifth digit characterises the 

activity of the injured person when injured. This complete chapter 20 generally requires extra 

registration resources in hospitals and EDs in order to get sufficiently complete coding, e.g. 

less than 5% unknown. Also for fatalities the information available to the physician filling in 

the death certificate is now and then insufficient for adequate recording. The tables below 

give an overview of the completeness in average in the Nordic countries for fatalities, inpatients and EDs. 

Table 1. Completeness of codes relevant for injuries and accidents for fatalities in 

the Nordic countries. 

Country ICD-10, chapter 19 ICD-10, chapter 20, 

three first digits 

ICD-10, chapter 20, 

digits 4 and 5 

Denmark 1) About 100% About 100% 50%? 

Finland 2) About 100% About 100% 94% 2)

Norway 3) About 100% About 100% 42% 

Sweden 4) About 100% About 100% 50%? 

1) Information from Birthe Frimodt-Møller, National Institute of Public Health, for digits 4 and 5 accurate 

percentage was not obtained from National Board of Healh. 

2) Information from Anne Lounamaa, STAKES. Digits 4 and 5 are replaced with one digit for accident type 

(described in section above). 

3) Fatalities 2000 (Statistics Norway, 2002). 

4) Information from Lars Gunnar Hörte, Karolinska Institute. 

For the fatalities, the diagnosis codes and the three first digits in chapter 20 (the previous Ecode in ICD-9) is filled in with a sufficiently high completeness. For the fourth and fifth 

digits, however, the completeness is far less than wanted. Routines should be established for 

returning death certificates that lack information to the reporting physicians for an adequate 

filling in of chapter 20. 
16-3

Table 2. Completeness of codes relevant for injuries and accidents for in-patients in 

national discharge registers in the Nordic countries. (-: not used) 

Country ICD-10, 

Chapter 19 

ICD-10, chapter 20, 

three first digits 

ICD-10, chapter 

20, digits 4 and 5 

NCECI 

(short) 

Denmark 1) About 100% - - 90% 

Finland 2) About 100% 90% 65% 2) - 

Norway 3) About 100% 30% 5% - 

Sweden 4) About 100% about 95% 5%? - 

1) Information from Birthe Frimodt-Møller, National Institute of Public Health. 

2) Information from Anne Lounamaa, STAKES. Digits 4 and 5 are replaced with one digit for accident type 

(described in section above). 

3) Sjølingstad et al., 1999. 

4) Information from Lars Gunnar Hörte, Karolinska Institute and Lars Berg, National Board of Health. 

Here too we see that medical codes have high completeness, while chapter 20 is less filled in. 

When physicians are about to fill in the data of chapter 19 and 20 in the case record, the 

patient has most often left the hospital. The relevant information required for filling in chapter 

20 is mostly not available, and hence not recorded in the case records. In Norway, it is 

proposed to let ambulance personnel and receptionists register the relevant data and to include 

it in the records for the injured patients. 

Table 3. Completeness of codes relevant for injuries and accidents in the daily 

routines for out-patients (accident and emergency departments) in the 

Nordic countries (-: not used). 

Country ICD-10, chapter 19/ICPC ICD-10, ch. 20, 

three first digits

ICD-10, ch. 20,

digits 4 and 5 

NCECI 

(short) 

MDS 

Denmark 1) About 100% - - 95% - 

Finland 2) About 100% - - - - 

Norway 3) About 100% - - - Some municipalities 

Sweden 4) About 100% 10%? 10%? - - 

1) Information from Birthe Frimodt-Møller, National Institute of Public Health. 

2) Information from Anne Lounamaa, STAKES. 

3) Lund et al., 2003. 

4) Information from Lars Gunnar Hörte, Karolinska Institute. 

The medical codes have high completeness, while chapter 20 is not in use or has relatively 

low completeness. In Denmark, there is a relatively high reporting with a short version of 

NCECI. 

In Norway, some general practitioners register an injury MDS in their electronic journal. 

When a patient is given a predefined ICPC-code (see Appendix A), an extra window opens in 

which the relevant injury and accident codes plus free text can be recorded, see Appendix 

(Grimsmo and Johnsen, 1999; Lund, 2002; Lund et al., 2003). It is not known if similar 

registrations occur in the other Nordic countries. 
16-4

Sentinel systems 

Sentinel systems require extra economic and personnel resources for registration of the required data. 

Such systems based on NCECI (with product codes included) were introduced in the Nordic 

countries in the 1980s. For the time being the situation is as follows: 

In Denmark, the complete NCECI (with product codes included) is recorded in five hospitals 

for in- and out-patients, all injuries, covering a representative sample of about 15% of the 

population. In addition, in the county of Funen (5% of the population), injuries are recorded 

with the same classification in more or less the same detail. 

In Finland, no sentinel system is present. 

In Norway, a sentinel system in four towns (in- and out-patients – all injuries with the 

complete NCECI) covering about 8% of the population was running since 1990. Three years 

ago, it was reduced to two towns. Today, the funding of the sentinel system has stopped. The 

local hospitals are now looking for regional financial sources. The future for the Norwegian system 

is pending. 

In Sweden, there is a sentinel system covering home and leisure accidents for 5% of the 

population. This is planned to expand to cover 10% of the population and include all injuries 

(from 2004). In addition, there are systems covering all injuries in cities of Stockholm and 

Umeå, and in the county of Västergötaland, covering 20% of the Swedish population. 

Conclusion

For the moment, there seem to be two different strategies in the Nordic countries with regard 

to the development of injury registration in the health care system: 

1) Denmark and Sweden (and Iceland): Nationwide monitoring of injuries using Minimum 

Data Sets of comprehensive classifications (NCECI and ICD-10) in the routine 

registration for in- and out-patients, and sentinel systems using the comprehensive 

classification, NCECI, including product codes. 

2) Finland and Norway: An abbreviated chapter 20 (ICD-10) and/or Minimum Data Sets in 

the routine for in- and out-patients and at some GPs, no sentinel systems. 

Appendix 

Some data elements and codes in the Minimum Data Set to be collected from GPs, 

OHPs, EDs, hospitals and death certificates in Oslo 

(A) ICPC is the International Classification for Primary Care (Lamberts and Wood, 1987). It 

is developed by the World Organisation of National Colleges, Academies, and 

Academical Associations of General Practitioners/Family Physicians (WONCA) in close 

collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). The following ICPC-codes are 
16-5

defined as injuries (Grimsmo and Johnsen, 1999 – P77 attempted suicide and Z25 assault 

are added): 

(a) Fracture (all types) L72-L76 

(b) Sprain and strain, dislocation L77-81, L96 

(c) Concussion, other head injury without fracture N79,80 

(d) Eye injury, foreign body included F75,76, F79 

(e) Laceration/cut and animal/human bite S13, S18 

(f) Burns, scalds S14 

(g) Superficial skin injury, incl. insect bite S12, S15-17, S19, H78 

(h) Poisoning A84, A86 

(i) Other or multiple injuries A80-81, A88, A96, B76-77, D79-

80, H76-77, H79, N81, P77, R87-

88, U80, X82, Y80, Z25 

(B) ICD-10 is the tenth version of International Statistical Classification of Diseases and 

Related Health Problems, maintained by WHO (1992). It consists of 20 chapters, two of 

them are relevant for injuries: 

(B1) Chapter 19 classifies the nature of injuries. There still is some discussion internationally 

regarding the definition of injury (Langley et al., 2002). For the purpose in Oslo, injuries are 

defined as the health events coded from S00 – T78 (the complication codes T79-T88 and 

sequelae codes T90-98 are excluded). 

(B2) Chapter 20 classifies the external cause of injuries. This chapter seems so detailed and 

complicated, that some countries, such as Finland and Norway have made modified 

(abbreviated) versions. In the Norwegian version (National Health Inspectorate, 1996) the 

main groups are (number of categories within each group in parenthesis): 

(a) Transport accidents (16) V01 – V99 

(b) Other accidents (18) W00 – X59 

(c) Intentional self-harm (1) X6n (=X60-69) 

(d) Assault (1) X8n (=X85-99) 

(e) Event of undetermined intent (1) Y1n (=Y10-34) 

(f) Legal intervention, operation of war and civil insurrection (1) Y3n (=Y35-39) 

(C) Intent (ICD-10-codes in parenthesis): 

(a) Accidental injury (V01 – X59) 

(b) Intentional self-harm (suicide, attempted suicide – X6n) 

(c) Assault (interpersonal violence – X8n) 

(d) Other (legal intervention, operation of war and civil insurrection, undetermined 

Y1n and Y3n) 

(D) Place of occurrence (compatible with the 4th digit in ICD-10, Chapter 20, Norwegian 

version): 

(a) Home, including garden and out buildings 

 (b) Nursing home 

(c) Farm, excluding home 

(d) Road, street, traffic accident (with moving vehicle involved) 

(e) Road, street, excluding traffic accident 

(f) Kindergarten with playground 

(g) Other playground 

(h) School and schoolyard, excluding sports area and gymnasium 

(i) Sports and athletics area, gymnasium 
16-6

(j) Countryside, water, sea 

(k) Other (industrial/construction, commercial, restaurant etc.) 

(E) Activity (compatible with the 5th digit in ICD-10, Chapter 20, Norwegian version): 

(a) Work for income, also as self employed, excluding travel for work 

(b) Education, including school sports, compulsory service (military) 

(c) Sports, exercise, excluding professional sports 

(d) Other (leisure, play, etc.) 

(F) Severity is adopted from Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) (AAAM, 1991): 

(a) First aid treatment, including by medical doctor 

(b) Minor (AIS 1)

(c) Moderate (AIS 2) 

(d) Severe (AIS 3-5)

(e) Fatal (AIS 6) 

Poisonings are included in the severity scale, proposed by a working group of medical 

doctors. Some examples of the injuries in each category are seen on the window in the 

electronic journal for guiding the physician in the decision of which code to use. 

(G) The narrative is a free text description of the accident and injury event with maximum of 

150 digits. The following questions sometimes appear in the window in the electronic journal: 

(a) What did you do when the accident happened? 

(b) How did the accident occur? 

(c) What went wrong? 

(d) How did you get hurt? 

 (H) Last physician contact for same injury 

(a) Not treated earlier 

(b) Hospital 

(c) Municipality ED 

(d) Local ED 

(e) Other medical doctor in Oslo 

(f) Other medical doctor outside Oslo 

(I) Referred to treatment at other places 

(a) No further treatment 

(b) Municipality ED 

(c) Hospital in Oslo 

(d) Other hospital 

(e) Other health institution. 
16-7

References 

AAAM, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, 1991. Abbreviated Injury 

Scale. Morton Grove, Illinois. 

Grimsmo, A., Johnsen, K., 1999. Data-assisted review of medically treated injuries in general 

practice. European Journal of General Practice 5, 59-65. 

Lamberts, H., Wood, M., (Eds.), 1987. ICPC, International Classification of Primary Care. 

Oxford University Press, Oxford. 

Langley, J., Stephenson, S., Cryer, C., Borman, B., 2002. Traps for the unwary in estimating 

person based injury incidence using hospital discharge data. Injury Prevention 8, 332-337. 

Lund, H., 2002. Recording of injuries in a small community by a general practitioner. In: 

Lund, J., Beier, R.M., Olsen B.O., (Eds.): Injury registration for monitoring and prevention: 

Experiences and challenges. Directorate for Health and Social Affairs, Oslo, pp. 65-71. 

(Available at www.safecommunity.no/cparticle55892-8188b.html). 

Lund, J., Beier, R.M., Olsen, B.O., (Eds.), 2002. Injury registration for monitoring and prevention: 

Experiences and challenges. Directorate for Health and Social Affairs, Oslo. (Available at 

www.safecommunity.no/cparticle55892-8188b.html). 

Lund, J., Bjerkedal, T., Gravseth, H.M., Vilimas, K., Wergeland, E. 2003. A two-step 

medically-based injury surveillance system – experiences from the Oslo injury register. 

Submitted for publication. 

National Health Inspectorate, 1996. Den internasjonale statistiske klassifikasjonen av 

sykdommer og beslektede helseproblemer. 10 revisjon. (ICD-10, Norwegian version). Statens 

helsetilsyn, Oslo. 

NOMESCO, Nordic Medical Statistical Committee, 1984, 1990, 1997. Classification of 

External Cause of Injuries. NOMESCO, Copenhagen. 

Nordic Councils of Ministers, 1978. Reporting of home and leisure accidents (In Swedish 

with English summary.) Report NU B 1978:14, Copenhagen. 

Sjølingstad, A., Alvær, K., Engeland, A., Forsén, L., 2001. Skaderegistrering ved hjelp av 

ICD-10 ved norske sykehus. (In Norwegian with English abstract.) Tidsskr Nor Lægeforen 

121, 1052-1054. 

Statistics Norway, 2002. Dødsårsaker 2000. (Cause of Death 2000 – in Norwegian with 

English abstracts.) Statistisk sentralbyrå, Oslo. 

WHO, World Health Organization, 1992. International Classification of Diseases and Related 

Health Problems: Tenth Revision: Volume 1, tabular list (ICD-10). World Health 

Organization, Geneva. 
16-8

WHO, Working Group of Injury Surveillance Methods, 2002. International Classification of 

External Causes of Injuries (ICECI): Data Dictionary, version 1.1. Consumer Safety Institute, 

Amsterdam. (Available at www.iceci.org). 
Deaths Due to Terror Acts - Coding the external cause for statistical purposes 

 

Pnina Zadka 

Background: 

The Collins dictionary [1] defines “terror” as: 

1. Great fear, panic, or dread 

2. A person or thing that inspires great dread 

The US legal definition of terror: Alarm; fright; dread; the state of mined by the 

apprehension of hurt from some hostile or threatening event or manifestation; fear caused 

by appearance of danger. In an indictment for riots at common law, it must have been 

charged that the acts done were “ to the terror of the people”. An element of offense of 

aggravated kidnapping is any act, which is done to fill with intense fear or to coerce by

threat or force [2]. The same source defines Act of terrorism: An activity that involves a 

violent act or an act dangerous to human life that is violation of the criminal law of the 

United States or of any state; or that would be a criminal violation if committed within 

the jurisdiction of the United States or of any state; and appears to be intended to 

intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of the government 

by intimidation or coercion, or (iii) to affect the conduct of government by assassination 

or kidnapping [2]. 

The term terrorism as perceived by most countries’ jurisdiction systems and international 

laws, refers to premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against civilian 

targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an 

audience in order to achieve political changes. This term distinguishes terror from other 

forms of guerilla war or non-violent protest strikes of civilian acts, by the target and the 

mode of action. Guerilla war targets are military and/or other official government and law 

enforcement agencies. Protest strikes do not use intimidating violence and therefore 

shouldn’t be defined as war. This perception is also in accordance with the Geneva and 

Hague Convention, which accepts the basic principal that the deliberate harming of 

17-1
soldiers during war is a necessary evil whereas a deliberate targeting of civilians is a war 

crime. 

Is “one man’s terrorist another man’s freedom fighter”? Sure it is! Also in other forms of 

war, “one man’s oppressor is another man’s liberator”. But this does not change the fact 

that it is war and should be classified as war, for the casualties of the “oppressors” and 

for the casualties of the “liberators”. These deaths should not be classified as an “assault” 

also from the prevention perspective; diverse modes of prevention action are needed for 

assault and terrorism. 

Terrorism is different from other criminal acts in the same way as other modes of war are 

different from criminal acts. Terrorism is therefore a mode of war different from Guerilla 

war. Terrorism is aimed to achieve political, ideological and religious, (national or 

international) changes like other wars, and their main targets for actions are to intimidate 

ordinary civilians in order to impose changes in government actions. 

The twentieth century witnessed great changes, in the use and practice of terrorism as a 

tactic to achieve political aims. Terrorism became the hallmark of a number of political

movements stretching across the whole political spectrum. Technological advances, 

which on one hand reduced the volume and on the other hand increased the destructive 

power of different kinds of warfare, enabled more efficient concealing of warfare 

substances possession. Terror activity has been intensified with the expansion of 

communication and media coverage, and became the preferred mode of action by 

numerous political groups. 

Classification of Injuries: 

The International Classifications of Diseases, current and previous editions, devoted a 

special chapter for injuries due to external causes resulting from war operations. The 

classification combines war and other civil insurrections under the same category. The 

17-2
causes in the chapter are sub-categorized by “type of weapons/warfare” causing the 

injury. The chapter does not enable differentiation by “type of war”. 

One of the purposes of the external causes categories is to enable and promote prevention 

programs. The lack of this sub-categorization reduces the usability and forces local 

solutions that may not be internationally comparable. Denial of countries’ needs, for such 

sub-categories prevented the estimation of human loss due to these phenomena as well as 

international comparisons. Terrorism as a type of war is becoming the practice rather 

than the exception in the post WWII era. Ignoring the need by the international agency

responsible for classification of deaths is ignoring the obvious. 

In the last decades, almost all countries in the world suffered casualties from terror 

activity, developed countries as well as developing countries. Countries may define these 

actions as terror or otherwise, depending on internal political issues. The classification

should enable the statistical system to have a unified definition that will not “label” the 

incident but will describe it in such a way that would clarify the coding procedure. 

Israel’s statistical system was confronted with the need of estimating these deaths about 

20 years ago, a few years after such activities caused fatal casualties on more than one 

occasion. National statistical offices have to respond to local needs and requests sent by

the Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) to the WHO classification division were 

not answered. Israel had, therefore, to come up with a code, which would enable coding 

these deaths uniquely and still maintain easy categorization into broader categories. The 

ICBS considered these actions as a mode of war (or civil insurrection). A new code was 

added to the “Injuries due to operation of war” chapter. Because the death database in 

Israel allows for a six digits code, there was no problem in adding a fourth and fifth digit 

to one of the war codes in the ninth ICD revision. 

The code was added to E998 (Injury due to war operations but occurring after cessation 

of hostilities). The following codes were added, and WHO was notified. 

E998.0 – deaths due to terror action 

17-3
The type of “warfare” was sub-categorized by an extra digit. 

E998.00 – bomb - blast - explosion – “ suicide bomber” 

E998.01 – snipers 

E998.02 - careless handling of explosive 

E998.03 – injury to perpetrator 

E998.04 – mines 

E998.06 – shot down aircraft 

E998.09 - other and unspecified 

E998.9 - Injury due to war operations but occurring after cessation of hostilities. 

At the time this sub-categorization had answered the needs and the possibilities. 

Israel had raised the need to introduce a special code for these fatalities at different 

international meetings, but the request was always opposed, with different arguments 

depending on the respondent. 

With the introduction of the tenth revision of ICD (1998 in Israel) there was a need to add 

codes for the terror fatalities again, as these events did not stop. 

Again we thought the proper solution would be to add an extra code to the “War 

Operations” chapter and we have added the code -Y37 – with subcategories as we 

thought would answer Israel’s needs. This was prior to the “September 11” event. After 

the “September 11” the US was also confronted with the need for a special code for the 

fatalities and nonfatal injuries from that event. 

The main debate is, who will decide whether an event is a terror action or criminal act.

As in other cases of war I would assume, that the same authorities that define a specific 

event as “war” would decide on this as well. No one doubts that a country is sovereign to 

decide about what is war. If we agree that terrorism is a mode of WAR, then countries 

will be sovereign to define these actions as well. Nevertheless the definition should be 

clear and exclusive to avoid confusion and misclassification. 

17-4
Suggestions for Modification of the Classification in ICD-10 

The head of collaborating centers have suggested that the US add the code in the “U” 

chapter, which is a general chapter for national modification and countries may use it for 

their own needs. Israel had agreed for the time being to use the same codes as the US. 

The problem is that currently only the US and Israel are using these new codes. These 

will prevent proper international comparison on this category, as it would have different 

meanings for different countries. As long as the new codes are not a WHO 

recommendation, countries may choose to define this cases in any way they choose. This 

will no doubt distort international comparisons. 

The EU is currently proposing a legal definition for “terrorism” for the member states. 

This definition will become effective only after it has been approved by all member 

states. Six of the EU member states have already a legal definition. When the definition 

will be approved it will become obligatory in each of the member states. It is expected

that the process will take some time and the definition will most probably be altered 

before it is finalized legally [3]. If EU countries adopt the suggested definition, 

corresponding changes in the classification will be more likely to be accepted. 

 

Now, that many countries in the world, developed as well as developing, including the 

EU countries, have experienced some form of such events, international cooperation for 

statistical purposes is essential. 

I recommend that the ICE group re-think the issue, and propose to the WHO to modify 

the “WAR OPERATION” chapter to include three different types of war: 

1. “Traditional war”- war between official/ordinary armed forces 

2. Guerilla - civilian and pseudo-military groups targeting against government, 

military and other law enforcement agencies 

3. Terrorism – civilian and pseudo-military groups targeting mainly at civilians. 

17-5
Each of these main categories will be then subdivided by type of warfare, similarly to the 

current sub-grouping in ICD-10, with some extra sub-codes as proposed by the US in 

their “U01-U02” [4]. 

References: 

[1] The Collin’s English Dictionary, 1998, Harper Collin’s 

[2] Black’s Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition 

[3] http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,48807,00.html

[4] www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/otheract/icd9/appendix1.htm

Comments 

 This is a political issue. In some countries classifying these deaths other than 

assault will interfere with the prosecution of the perpetrators process. 

 The European Community is now discussing the adoption of a new juridical 

definition of terror, 

17-6
PoisonICE Update 

Bob Flanagan and Clare Griffiths 

Introduction

In adolescents/adults most acute poisoning (a single episode of poisoning or several 

related episodes that present as a single incident) is the result of deliberate self-poisoning 

(suicide/parasuicide, drug abuse, etc.) whereas in children most episodes are accidental 

poisoning or poisoning by someone else. 

Injury and poisoning are treated together in the ICD as both have an external cause such 

as accident, suicide, homicide, etc., as well as a secondary cause or nature of injury - 

many toxicologists are confused by this and feel that useful toxicological information is 

lost when poisoning data are presented using the ICD framework. However, prevention 

must tackle the underlying cause of the poisoning hence it is important to gather the 

‘external cause’ information. There are also further public health issues including 

estimation of treatment resources based on number and severity of cases and on treatment 

requirements such as provision of stocks of antidotes. 

PoisonICE: The Way Ahead 

Toxicology is poisons-oriented hence there is a need to access poisoning information by 

poison as well as by underlying (external) cause. Moreover, with unusual poisons, rare 

presentations, and/or novel treatments, more information than usually given for wellknown poisons is needed to make sense of the data. 

Fatal and non-fatal poisoning are different entities as regards gathering poisoning data. 

Non-fatal poisoning 

Poison Control Centre (PCC) calls (telephone or electronic) are a major source of data on 

non-fatal poisoning. PCCs have well-researched system for recording case data by: 

Compound(s) 

Severity/outcome

Treatment 

[Underlying cause] 

So far the system is available in English, French, Spanish, and Portugese, and is being 

translated into Chinese, Russian and possibly Arabic. More information is to be found at: 

http://www.intox.org/default.html

18-1
At the moment access requires a log-in code but I could enquire whether ICE participants 

can be given codes if individuals would like to explore this in more detail. 

ICECI also has a section on classification of poisoning for use in emergency departments, 

etc. 

Fatal Poisoning 

Most acute poisoning deaths occur outside hospital hence are not reported to PCCs. 

However, many countries have a central system that records poisoning deaths based on 

ICD codes allocated as a result of coroner/medical examiner investigation of the death.

Poisoning deaths tend to be investigated much more thoroughly than non-fatal poisoning 

with regards to analytical evidence of the nature and magnitude of exposure, i.e. in many 

if not all cases detection, identification, and measurement of poisons present in tissue 

samples, most usually blood, from the deceased will have been undertaken. There are 

especially important public health implications as regards underlying cause of fatal 

poisoning (suicide, substance abuse-related deaths, external cause in children, 

occupational poisoning, etc.). 

Classifying acute poisoning deaths is simpler than classifying non-fatal poisoning 

episodes because the poisons implicated are often known with relative certainty and 

severity, treatment, and outcome are not issues. 

It is not really important to attempt to assign a principal poison when two or more 

compounds are mentioned on death certificates as the likely fatal poison can usually be 

inferred from what is already known about the toxicology of the compounds reported, 

except with new/unusual poisons or unusual circumstances as discussed above. 

Improving Access to Fatal Poisoning Data 

Fatal poisoning data is used in three main public health areas: 

 Suicide prevention 

 Accident prevention 

Substance abuse prevention 

There is an absolute requirement to study acute poisoning only and ensure all such deaths 

certified are counted - this has often not been done consistently because of incomplete 

understanding of ICD coding rules and different application of the coding rules in 

different countries, and different ways in which the data have been collated and 

presented. 

There is a need for clear terminology with respect to substance abuse-related poisonings. 

Use of the term ‘drug deaths’ overestimates drug abuse-related deaths (for example it 

includes suicides from drugs such as tricyclic antidepressants), but underestimates acute 

poisoning deaths (for example deaths from carbon monoxide and ethanol and volatile 

18-2
substance abuse-related deaths are excluded). Reporting ‘illicit drug deaths’ may also be 

unhelpful if taken to represent substance abuse-related deaths as a whole as there is a 

need to study deaths related to methadone and other drugs used in treatment of drug 

addiction as well as illicit substances.

An aim of PoisonICE is to achieve consistency and clarity of presentation of fatal 

poisoning data between years/organizations/countries. 

Common pitfalls in collating poisoning data in ICD-9/10 

1. Substance abuse-related deaths are often under-represented in fatal poisoning statistics 

based solely on external cause codes. This is because if drug dependence or addiction 

is mentioned on the death certificate the death should be coded to ICD-9 304 or 305 

(ICD-10 F10-F19) rather than an external cause code under ICD coding rules. In 

addition volatile substance abuse-related deaths may be recorded as traumatic deaths if 

the immediate cause of death was a fall whilst intoxicated, or asphyxia if the deceased 

was found in association with a plastic bag or had choked after inhaling vomit. 

2. Recording opioid-related deaths using ICD-9/10 can be problematic. An opioid is a 

compound that has agonist activity at opioid receptors in the brain. Many such 

compounds are opiates (for example heroin, morphine, and codeine) that are derived 

from opium, and hence are associated with many deaths worldwide every year. Some

synthetic opioids such as methadone and pethidine are not derived from opium hence 

are not opiates, although they are classified as opiates in the ICD. This does not really 

matter from the point of view of recording opioid-related deaths, except that 

dextropropoxyphene, a potent opioid structurally related to methadone and a very 

common cause of fatal poisoning in the UK, is classified separately and thus omitted 

from opiate/opioid poisoning data based on the ICD code for opiates. 

3. ICD-9/10 do not facilitate access to cases involving specific poisons if another poison 

in addition to alcohol (ethanol) from a different ICD grouping is mentioned on the 

death certificate because they are coded to a non-specific code (T50.9 in ICD-10). 

Conversely, it is not easy to derive data on fatal poisonings that do involve alcohol if 

any other compound is also mentioned on the death certificate, as these deaths are 

coded to the drug rather than ethanol under ICD coding rules. 

4. The ICD is relatively poor on recording rare/unusual/new poisons as the coding system

lacks the fine detail necessary to document such compounds separately, but these are 

often the compounds of considerable interest. Examples of such compounds include 

MDMA (ecstasy), selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and herbal/ethnic 

medicines. ICD-10 is an improvement on ICD-9 in this respect, as long as secondary 

cause (T codes) are used in addition to the underlying cause of death codes. However, 

some specific drugs are still not identified separately, an obvious example being 

MDMA. A flexible system is needed to permit recording of data on all (groups of) 

poisons mentioned on death certificates + other relevant information (age, sex, 

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underlying cause) in a dynamic database as has been done in England and Wales since 

1993 (see Reference 1 for more information on the operation of this database). 

Conclusions 

1. Some further refinement or addition to the ICD is needed when gathering and collating 

fatal poisoning data if such data are to be used to generate useful information on the 

poisons involved. Use of a system such as the ONS drugs database (in which all drugs 

mentioned on death certificates are recorded electronically) in conjunction with the 

ICD (supplemental system) is one possible way forward. However for this to be useful 

internationally agreed terminology for the thousands of different poisons/combinations 

of poisons that may be encountered would be needed. 

2. Use of a coding system based on the IPCS INTOX poison classification scheme is a 

further possibility - this scheme is very good for recording information on rarer 

compounds, animal poisons, etc. IPCS would welcome extended use of their system, 

but work would be needed to transform the current classification system into a true 

coding system.

3. Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) numbers might also be considered as the basis for a 

classification system where poison(s) known, and scientific names could be used 

where an organism is known, etc. However, the system would have to be able to cope 

with some unknown poisons as well! Caution would be needed in the use of CAS 

numbers as, for example, different salts and racemates, for example, have different 

numbers to the parent compound although the use of ‘intelligent’ software could help 

here. 

4. Use of the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) therapeutic drug classification 

system maintained by the WHO Collaborating Centre for Drug Statistics Methodology 

in Oslo, Norway (http://www.whocc.no/atcddd/) is inappropriate as only therapeutic 

drugs are covered hence illicit drugs and other poisons such as carbon monoxide (the 

major single cause of fatal poisoning in many countries) are excluded. 

5. In any proposed supplemental system the ability to group/ungroup poisons present 

according to the reason for the data analysis (e.g. prescription drugs, illicit drugs, 

antidepressants, etc.) would be very important. If poisons were recorded as chemical 

entities then grouping for specific purposes (e.g. study of antidepressant-related 

deaths, analgesic-related deaths, etc.) would be relatively straightforward. 

6. It would be valuable to record the mechanism of death (e.g. liver failure from

paracetamol, inhalation of vomit, etc.) and route(s) of exposure if known. To this end 

there is a need to encourage coroners, etc. to be as specific as possible in providing the 

necessary information given that anonymity of the individuals concerned must be 

preserved in any publications. 

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7. If it were decided to introduce a drugs and poisons supplement to ICD-10 a ‘tool-kit’ 

with rules as to how to use the new system and to produce data in a standardised form

(e.g. agreed compound groupings for specific purposes) would be needed. 

The Way Ahead? 

1. Propose to make annual update of fatal poisoning tables published in Forensic Science 

International (Flanagan & Rooney, 2002) available on the ICE website. 

2. Further tables on poisoning in childhood in preparation and again propose that updates 

be posted on the ICE website. 

3. We would be interested if other countries with comparable data were willing to make 

them available so that we can start to look at issues of comparability between 

countries, and possibly construction of further summary tables/figures. 

4. A pilot project of a possible supplementary system with a small data-set should be 

considered. The Institute of Environmental Science & Research (ESR), New Zealand 

are developing a national chemical injury surveillance database and this might make a 

suitable test bed for a supplementary system. 

References

1. Flanagan RJ, Rooney C. Recording acute poisoning deaths. Forensic Sci Int 

2002:128;3-19.

2. Lahti RA, Vuori E. Fatal alcohol poisoning: medico-legal practices and mortality 

statistics. Forensic Sci Int 2002;126:203-9. 

3. Landen MG, Castle S, Nolte KB, Gonzales M, Escobedo LG, Chatterjee BF, Johnson 

K, Sewell CM. Methodological issues in the surveillance of poisoning, illicit drug 

overdose, and heroin overdose deaths in new Mexico. Am J Epidemiol 2003;157:273-8.

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Annex 1 - Tables to be updated and made available on the ICE website 

1. Suicide/fatal poisoning: England & Wales 1950-99 

ICD-6 ICD-7 ICD-8 ICD-9

Suicide (see Note 

below) 

E970-

E979 

E970-E979 E950-E959

E980-E988 

E950-E959 

E980-E988 except 

E988.8 

Fatal poisoning N960-

N979 

N960-N967 N960-989 960-989

Poisoning suicides E970-

E973 

E970-E973 E950-E952

E980-E982 

E950-E952.9 

E980-E982.9 

2. Suicide: England & Wales, 1956-99 (ICD: as Fig. 2) 

3. Deaths due to carbon monoxide poisoning: England & Wales 1956-99 (ICD-6: N968, 

ICD-7: N968, ICD-8: N986, ICD-9: 986) 

4. Fatal poisoning: England & Wales, 1979-99 [ICD-9: 960-989 all poisonings, 965 

analgesics, 986 carbon monoxide (CO), 969.0 antidepressants, 980 alcohol, 967 

sedatives and hypnotics] 

5. ‘Analgesic’ deaths: England & Wales, 1979-99 [ICD-9: 965 analgesics, 965.0 opiates, 

965.1 salicylates; manual search and ONS drugs database 

(dextro)propoxyphene and paracetamol] (* No data for 1981 for paracetamol and 

for propoxyphene because of industrial action by Registrars of Births and 

Deaths) 

6. Paracetamol-related deaths: England & Wales, 1969-99 (manual search, substances 

recorded on coroner’s certificate and ONS drugs database) (* No data for 1981 

because of industrial action by Registrars of Births and Deaths) 

7. Fatal poisoning, age <10 yr: England & Wales, 1968-99 (ICD-8: N960-989 all 

poisonings, N986 carbon monoxide (CO), N987 ‘other gases, fumes & vapours’, 

N960-979 drugs; ICD-9: 960-989 all poisonings, 986 carbon monoxide (CO), 987 

‘other gases, fumes & vapours’, 960-979 drugs) 

8. Fatal poisoning, drug abuse: England & Wales, 1979-99 (EMCDDA definition: ICD-9: 

292, 304, 305.2-9, E850.0, E854.1-2. HO definition: manual search of deaths 

with underlying cause 292, 304, 305, or secondary cause 960-979 for mention of 

controlled substance on coroner’s certificate. ONS definition: ICD-9: 304, 305.2-

9, 965.0, 965.8, 967, 968.5, 969, 977.8-9) 

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9. Fatal poisoning, dependent/non-dependent abuse and related codes: England & 

Wales, 1979-99 (ICD-9: 292, 304, 305.2-9, E962.0) 

10. Heroin-related deaths (drug abuse, dependence or poisoning deaths where heroin 

and/or morphine recorded on the death certificate): England & Wales, 1993-9 

(ONS drugs database) 

11. Methadone-related deaths (drug abuse, dependence or poisoning deaths where 

methadone recorded on the death certificate): England & Wales, 1993-9 (ONS 

drugs database) 

12. Fatal poisoning: controlled drugs other than heroin and methadone, England & 

Wales, 1993-9 (ONS poisons database) 

13. VSA-Related sudden deaths: UK, 1971-99 (data from 

http://www.sghms.ac.uk/depts/phs/vsamenu.htm) 

14. VSA-Related sudden deaths: UK, 1971-99 by age group (see above) 

15. VSA-Related sudden deaths: UK, 1982-99 by product abused (see above) 

Note 

1) In routine statistics, ONS defines suicides as deaths from suicide and deaths from 

'injury undetermined whether accidentally or purposely inflicted'. It is likely that most of 

these latter deaths are cases where the harm is self-inflicted but there was insufficient

evidence to prove 

that the deceased deliberately intended to kill themselves. 

2) For suicide data for England and Wales, all deaths assigned to the code 

Y33.9/E988.8 are excluded if the record had a 'verdict pending' classification. This code 

is used to speed up death registration in cases where a coroner adjourned an inquest 

awaiting prosecution in a higher 

court. The death could then be registered before legal proceedings had been completed. 

This process is known as 'accelerated registration'. Nearly all of these cases are 

subsequently found to be homicide and their inclusion would present an inaccurate 

picture of suicide mortality. 

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