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Biomedical subjects

W S Copes

Publications and source records attributed to W S Copes.

41 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMed1986

Interactive videodisc to teach combat trauma life support.

Training military physicians in trauma management is a dilemma in peacetime, since there are few opportunities to gain clinical experience within the military care system. This program provides experience in clinical decision making through case simulation. Five cases, of increasing difficulty, are presented in a single videodisc side. The program is implemented on a system based on the IBM PC, and is written in the C programming language. The program emphasizes clinical realism by providing many clinical options at each decision point, and by audiovisually depicting combat clinical care in very realistic ways. The user interface is flexible and, though complex, is easy to use; it is supported by a narrated, on-line tutorial.

Computer-Assisted Instruction↗
PubMed1980

Assessment of injury severity: the triage index.

Injury severity scales of proven reliability and validity are essential for the appropriate allocation of therapeutic resources, for prediction of outcome, and for evaluation of the quantity and quality of emergency medical care in differing facilities and over time. Quantitation of injury severity in the field is particularly necessary. Existing scales are too imprecise to permit comparisons of management or systems of care. In this paper, the authors present the Triage Index, a measure of injury severity based on five simple variables observed in a design data set of 1084 patients. The Triage Index has been developed with state-of-the-art multivariate statistical techniques, meets the requirements of an interval ranking scale, and has been both validated and assessed for interuser reliability. The Triage Index is proposed as a validated system of early, rapid, noninvasive, accurate patient assessment permitting appropriate matching of trauma victims with available therapeutic resources as a means of reducing mortality and morbidity.

Emergency Medical Services↗
PubMed1980

An anatomic index of injury severity.

Systems for the quantitation of injury severity are crucial to the study of injury epidemiology, and to comparative evaluations of health care delivery in different regions, patient mixes, and environment. Existing anatomic injury severity scores suffer from subjectivity, and may be computed only at relatively high man-hour expense. In this paper we present an injury severity ranking system termed the Anatomic Index, derived from objective, observed probabilities of mortality, and computable from the same HICDA diagnostic codes widely available in hospitals and through software in hospital computer systems. Mathematic underpinnings of the method, theoretical consequences of underprediction and overprediction of mortality, and advantages of the new Index are presented.

Computers↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Bounds on a trauma outcome function via optimization.

One measure of the effectiveness of institutional trauma and burn management based on collected patient data involves the computation of a standard normal Z statistic. A potential weakness of the measure arises from incomplete patient data. In this paper, we apply methods of fractional programming and global optimization to efficiently calculate bounds on the computed effectiveness of an institution. The measure of effectiveness (i.e., the trauma outcome function) is briefly described, the optimization problems associated with its upper and lower bounds are defined and characterized, and appropriate solution procedures are developed. We solve an example problem to illustrate the method.

Age Factors↗